Jason Fuller & The Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus
by jmawesome
Summary: This story is about the adventures of a young mutant named Jason Fuller and his friends as they embark on a journey to save the world from Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. Lives will be changed, destinies will be fought, ancient magic will resurface, and for Jason, a question that has plagued him since his parents death, about what it truly means to be a hero, will be answered.
1. Chapter 1: A Hero Named John

Jason Fuller &amp; The Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus

By: Jairus Funnie

This Story is dedicated to Stan Lee. Because of him, I will always believe in heroes

Prologue:

It was December 17, 2014 in New York City, eight days before Christmas. Parents were shuffling around from store to store trying to buy the latest must haves for their children. Christmas carolers were going door to door, spreading Christmas cheer through holiday songs. Elsewhere, Spider-Man was putting the smackdown on some thugs who were trying to make way with an old lady's purse. It seemed as if this would be another average holiday season for New York and for the world. Or so it seemed.

**Chapter 1: A Hero Named John **

12:00 A.M December 10, 2014, St. Mark Industries, New York Division

John Mason, a security guard who worked at St. Mark Industries, was working a double shift, keeping an eye on a truck load of presents in the complex basement. These presents were all a part of St. Mark Industries Holiday Helping Hand. Every year, during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons, St. Mark Industries would donate massive amounts of food, clothes, toys and various other holiday goodies to homeless shelters and foster homes. The presents that John was keeping watch over, were scheduled to be delivered to their destinations in two weeks on Christmas Eve. As John was keeping watch over the presents via security footage, he noticed one of the basement doors being blasted off of its hinges and across the room. "_Burglars"?! _John thought at first. But that didn't make sense; the doors of the basement were reinforced Titanium, no regular weapon would be able to break through them. Plus, there was no need to steal; St. Mark Industries offered a 24 hour buffet in the lobbies of their business places, as well as free presents that were always restocked everyday. "_So why is someone breaking into the presents stockpile, and what weapons are they using that could blow a titanium door across the room?" _John asked himself. John was the only guard on duty, police reinforcement would soon arrive,the doors had silent alarms on them, but by the time they arrived, the burglars could be long gone by then. John steeled himself, grabbed his nightstick and taser gun, and started on his way down to the basement.

5 minutes and 20 floors later John was at the entrance of the basement. He quickly made his way inside, and hid behind a 10 foot tall wall of presents (yes there were that many). Despite the frantic hammering of his heart, John settled down so that he could listen for clues on who the invaders could be. When he heard one of their voices, John nearly screamed.

"Loki, are you certain that the artifact is in this place?" asked a dark and menacing voice.

"But of course my good Doctor Doom, you of course feel the arcane energy that radiates from this area?"

"Of that I do, yet I cannot pinpoint where it originates from, there must be a thousand presents in here"

"So what do we do, take them all with us?"

"Precisely, use your magic, transport them to the Doomship, I will instruct Magneto and the others to do the same as well."

At this point John was frozen in fear; this was no ordinary looting, this was some part of a diabolical plan by none other than Dr. Doom and Loki, two of the most notorious villains on the planet. Though he was frightened, he knew he could not let fear get the best of him. About 100 feet to the left of him was a large pole with a large red button, that had an emergency security frequency on it. This frequency would attract not only regular law enforcement, but also superheroes and the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. John knew without a doubt he had to get to this security alarm; he may not have been the brightest man alive, but his did know arcane meant mystical mumbo jumbo, which meant that you did not want it in the hands of the two men who were in this room with him. Carefully, very carefully, John peered around the corner of presents, scanning for the presence of the villains. Of course, he saw nothing but more piles of presents. "_That's ok, this is a good thing," _he thought. This gigantic amount of Christmas goodies would provide the perfect concealment environment. Also, if something fell, the villains would most likely assume it was a package that fell out of place, and if they came looking for the disturbance, they would have to traverse the maze like environment. John, now confident that he could pull this off, took a deep breath and began to walk toward his goal. He managed to get around one corner before the edge of Loki's dagger was pressed to his throat.

"Hello human," said Loki with a very cocky smirk. "Doing a bit of late night Christmas shopping?"

John knew he was dead, even if by some miracle he was able to trigger the alarm, there would be no way he'd ever walk out of here alive. Most people would break down, or beg for mercy. or that sort of thing, but not John. John knew that he had a job to do, a mission to complete; even if it cost him his life John was going to set off that alarm.

"Yeah," he started. "I just have to grab that green present over there, and i'll be on my way."

"Sorry friend," Loki responded. "You're on Santa's naughty list, no presents for you, although you can have this dagger through your fat-"

"I wanna talk to your boss" John quickly interrupted.

"What?" Loki asked. Clearly, he was bewildered and confused his face said something like: _did this piece of trash just talk back to me, why is he not begging for mercy like he's supposed too?_

"Your boss," John once again stated. "You know the guy giving you orders, the guy you work for, your boss."

Loki's eyes flashed dangerously, he was clearly not used to being addressed in such a disrespectful tone.

"Firstly mortal, you are in no position to make any demands. Secondly, I do not have a boss, I serve no one."

"Ok then," John responded. "Well then let me talk to your partner"

"I am going to kill you," said Loki with a disgusted look on his face. "I am going to slit your throat, and watch you bleed like the pig you are, why-"

"Did your boss tell you to do that?"

"HE'S NOT MY-"

"LOKI!" said the voice of Doctor Doom, who had just arrived to the scene. "WHO IS THIS MAN, AND WHY HAVEN'T YOU KILLED HIM YET!"

"This pathetic creature," started Loki, who was now seething in rage. "Would have words with you, my good Doctor."

"What do you want fool?" Doctor Doom asked John. "Speak quickly, lest I blast you to dust for your insolence."

"My name is John Mason," John started. "I wanna know why you're stealing all of these presents, what's the point?"

"That is none of your concern mortal man, prepare to die."

"Even if you do kill me, you won't get very far before The Avengers are on your tail."

"What are you talking about."

"This building is has a special security alarm that alerts the attentions of S.H.I.E.L.D, as soon as you leave, the Avengers will be on your butts faster than you can possibly imagine."

Dr. Doom grabbed John by his shirt and hoisted him six feet off of the ground.

"You will deactivate that alarm," he snarled. "Or you will suffer a fate far worse than death."

"Ok, ok, ok," said John, who was on the verge of pissing his pants. "Just set me down, and i'll reset the alarm on the access panel in the far corner." He pointed to an area that was in the general direction of the pole with the button on it.

Doctor Doom put him down and sent him on his way with a shove.

"Go," he said menacingly.

Despite being in mortal danger, John had never been more calm, collected, and focused in his entire life. As he made his way towards the control panel that did not exist, he began to think of ways to escape, and trigger the alarm. After a minute of walking and lots of turning, John was beginning to despair, when something caught his eye. About 5 feet in front of the pole with the alarm on it, was a metal rod lying on the floor. How it got there, John had no clue, maybe shrapnel from the explosion that blew the door down. Immediately, John formed a plan. To make matters more helpful, his shoes were untied; this would make the charade more believable. John pretended to trip and fall, making sure to lie with his hands forward to avoid suspicion, and to prevent any clanging or scuffling noises the rod might make if he tried to reach for it. Next, John slowly eased himself up, muttering a few swear words to make the fall look like an accident, and managed to get a grip on the metal pipe. As Doctor Doom reached down to grab John, he was surprised as the security guard quickly whacked him across the head with the pipe, making a very loud CLANG! The hit did not harm Doctor Doom, but it surprised him just enough for John to run and press the red button. Suddenly, the room was filled with the sound of the loudest sirens that had ever been heard, the sound was so loud everyone in New York City could probably hear it. John had completed his mission.

"NOOOOOOO!" shouted Doctor Doom as he blasted John in the chest with a bolt of lightning, killing the guard instantly.

"LOKI-"

"I'm on it." Loki quickly responded. He muttered a few words in ancient magic, and his hands went ablaze in emerald flame. Loki then clapped his hands, releasing a shockwave that traveled through the entire basement. After the wave had dissipated, everything in the basement was gone, like it vanished into thin air. As if on cue, 50 security guards and police officers dashed into the room from both sides, loading their guns, and ordering the two villains to stand down.

"I do not have time for these idiots," said Doctor Doom. "Loki, kill them all quickly, then rendezvous with me on the Doomship; we will most likely have guests arriving soon."

"As you wish my good Doctor," said Loki, who was smiling, and had pretty much stopped listening after kill them all. Doctor Doom clenched his fist and was engulfed in a beacon of light, that teleported him to his vessel. Immediately, law enforcement opened fire on Loki and after emptying their clips which totaled at about 200 bullets, Loki was still standing. Loki retaliated by releasing a another shock wave of magic energy that blew his attackers off of their feet. Next, he pulled out two throwing daggers and quicker than the eye could see, threw them through the hearts of two cops. As the daggers left his hands, to more, in a flash of green light; these daggers were put through the hearts of two more cops. After killing 30 cops and security guards this way, Loki conjured a wicked looking golden spear and assaulted the remaining 20 guards and cops. The entire fight took less than 50 seconds as Loki slashed and stabbed the guards with more strength and ferocity than they had ever seen before. When only five security guards remained, Loki used his spear to cut one in half through the waist and then threw his spear through the head of another. Then Loki pulled out three daggers and threw them all at once through the heads of the last three guards. Loki surveyed the battle ground gleefully, bathing in the gore and carnage. He thought about Magneto, Venom, Goblin, and the others who were on their various collection assignments. "_How many people have died tonight?" _he thought, as he surveyed the battle ground one last time.

"Five down, two to go." he said as he snapped his fingers, and vanished in a flash of green light.


	2. Chapter 2: I Strike Lightning

**Chapter 2: I Strike Lightning**

My name is Jason, Jason Fuller. Right now that's all I can tell you until I am authorized to give you more information, but i can tell you this. We are all in serious trouble. I mean it dude, we are all going down unless the right people find this story and band together to fight against the most ultimate evil this universe has ever seen. Because you're reading this story right now i'm gonna assume you are one of them, otherwise these stories would have never gotten into your possession. Ok, Agent Coulson has given me permission to brief you, so I need you to really pay attention. My friends will help me tell these stories, so don't get surprised if a jockey football player, or a sweet yet tomboyish girl hijacks my stories from time to time. I only have a few things to say before I get started. For those of you that don't believe in God or gods, you'd better start now, or this journey will not get any easier for you. For those of you that do, prepare yourselves, it's not all nectar and ambrosia like you think it is. Also, for those of you that think being a super-hero is a glamorous job, wake up and smell the coffee, it's not as cool as it's cracked up to be. Alright, now that I got that out of my system, let the story of my life (like what I did there?) begin.

6:00 A.M. December 10, 2014, My House, Somewhere in the Bronx

The blaring alarm on my iPod woke me up, and I groggily got out of bed. I had about 30 minutes until the bus came to pick me up, so I quickly brushed my teeth, combed my dreads, put on a purple shirt and some jeans, and packed my school stuff. Afterwards, I sat on my living room couch, and turned on the TV, expecting to watch some early morning cartoons before the bus arrived. Instead, a breaking news report was on the air.

"Security footage confirms that, at 12 A.M., five of the seven buildings that store presents for the St. Mark Industries Holiday Helping Hand were broken into and robbed clean of all the presents inside," said a blonde reporter in a white snow suit. Notorious villains such as Doctor Doom, Loki, Venom, and Magneto were confirmed to have played a part in this robbery, but the question is why. Heroes Luke Cage and Ms. Marvel arrived on the scene in New York an hour later, but by then, 50 police officers and security guards had been brutally murdered with another 150 deaths reported at various other locations."

"_Typical," _I thought to myself. "_Those lousy heroes never show up when you need them, but they're happy to show up after people die."_

Five minutes later, I heard the screeching sounds of the bus stopping in front of my house. I grabbed my backpack, a grey hoodie, a jumbo honey bun to eat for for breakfast, and headed out the door. As I left, I heard Doris say: "Bye Jason, have a good day."

"Thanks Doris, I will, you too," I responded as I closed the door and walked toward the bus.

Once I was on the bus, I sat down in the back seat, and put on my headphones so I could listen to music for the 30 minute drive from my house to school. So, you may be wondering why called my mom by her first name, right? Well the truth is she's not my mom. When I was 7 years old, my parents were killed at their jobs in Times Square, when Doctor Doom and his army of Doombots were battling the Fantastic Four and The Avengers. Of course, the heroes won the battle, saved the world from whatever it is Doctor Doom was planning, but my parents were killed in the crossfire. Ever since then I've always had a burning hatred toward superheroes. Sure they do a lot of good things, and save the world from time to time, but they are never really around when you actually need them. Where were they when Doctor Doom was stealing presents meant for the homeless? Where were they when 200 police officers and security guards were being slaughtered? Where were they when my parents were being crushed under 200 tons of rubble? In some ways, me being an orphan was their fault. Anyway, 30 minutes later, my bus dropped me off at my school, Abraham Lincoln High School. Starting out, my day was the same as always. First I went to English class. Then Math and History, which was followed by lunch period. For lunch I had a burger, some fries, a salad, and a carton of strawberry milk to wash it all down. Another thing you should know about me is that i'm not very social. At lunch, I always sit by myself, and I hardly ever talk to anyone. It's not that i'm a bad kid, or I hate people, I just never was a very social person; at least not after my parents died I wasn't. After lunch, it was time for my last and favorite class: Gym.

Gym was always my favorite class, because it was an escape for me to release some of my pent up aggression through physical activity. Today we were going to play my favorite game: dodgeball. I loved dodgeball because it was a game of strength, speed, accuracy, and awareness. Plus I got to throw stuff at people's faces and not get in trouble for it.

"Okay kiddies," said Coach Johnson our Gym teacher. "Line up, time to put you in groups. Crosby, Fuller, you two are captains, the rest of your team members have been chosen, you have five minutes, get ready.

Either by chance or by choice, Coach Johnson had me on a team filled with dorky, unathletic, and uncoordinated nerds. The other team however, was filled with strong, jockey looking muscle heads. Personally, I don't know why the coach put me on this team, I had the best grade in the class, plus I dominated every sport we played. I dunno, maybe it was to give the nerd squad a fighting chance, or more likely, Coach knew about my rivalry with Crosby. Ethan Crosby was this bully rich kid that was in the 11th grade with me, but barely. He was built like a football player, and although he was rich, he always dressed in ripped shirts, ripped pants, and dirty flannel jackets. Ethan's favorite pastime activity, was to beat up anyone that had higher than a C in three or more classes (probably cuz the guy has never made more than a D+ in his life). So that made me a prime target, due to the fact that I have three A's and one B. You'd think that after getting three black eyes, two bloody noses, and five knockouts, the guy would take a hint that I wasn't going to take any of his bullying crap, but like I said, the guy wasn't very bright. Come to think of it, I was glad that the Coach had arranged the team like this. It was a perfect way to beat Ethan and all of his goons in front of the whole classroom. Even if it killed me, today I was going to beat Ethan Crosby.

Once our five minutes were up, both teams went to walls of the opposite side of the gym, and waited for the coach to start the game.

"3,2,1…...DODGEBALL!"

The game did not start out in my favor. Remember how I said that I was on a team of nerds with no sense of coordination? Well when the game started, while my team was running to get some balls, a Chinese kid named Zhao Lee tripped and fell. This wouldn't have been too bad of a thing, but somehow he managed to trip me, as well as six other team members. To make matters worse, Ethan and his team got every last one of the balls, and eliminated the remaining four members on my team who were still of going on the offense like I wanted to, now I had to play defensively until I could get a decent amount of balls on my side. The game started to go in my favor when John Green threw a ball at me, which I caught and threw at a guy named Mason James. Suddenly, the game was at a 8-6 ratio in Ethan's favor, not so bad right? WRONG! 30 seconds later, Zhao tripped and fell again. Somehow, in a impossible, you-couldn't-mess-up-this-badly-even-if-you-tried action, he managed to trip the remaining four other players. Crosby and his team took advantage of this opportunity and attacked the nerd pile in a great and terrible volley of red balls. The game was now at an 8-1 ratio; in other words, I was f%* #$. Most of the balls were still on Crosby's side, and he had that look in his eyes that a predator has when it knows it's prey has no escape. Crosby ordered his team to spread out, in order to cut off any and all chance of escape I had. Then they threw everything they had at me in another volley of dodgeball fury. So basically, I lost the game right. WRONG AGAIN! In the last few seconds before impact, time seemed to slow down, like the balls were traveling through jello. In that small pocket of slowed time, I saw that two balls were traveling at me just the right way. So basically, I could catch them and avoid all of the other ones. This type of play would be impossible for anyone to do, given the speed that the balls were traveling at but like I said, time seemed to slow down. I ran towards the two balls and caught them. They hit me square in the chest, and it hurt a lot, but at least I had eliminated two of Crosby's goons. Plus, now all of the balls were on my side. The game was now at a 6-1 ratio, there were 7 minutes left, and I had to eliminate six guys in such a short amount of time; somehow, I was still gonna pull this off. I gathered all of the balls, and lined them up a few feet from the no crossing line. Then I took the balls two at a time, and bounced them as high as I could into the air; it was time to turn this game around. When two of the balls came down I quickly grabbed and threw them at two guys named Adrian and Jerome, who were too stupid to realize that looking at bouncing balls is not a good strategy in dodgeball. The balls hit them square in the chest and bounced back over to my side. Next, I grabbed two more balls and threw one at a guy named Henry and another at Ethan. The ball that I threw at Henry hit him hard in the head, but Ethan dodged the ball I threw at him, which sailed far back into his territory. The game was now at a 3-1 ratio. As Ethan scrambled to get the only ball that was on his side, I grabbed two more balls and threw them at two other guys on his team. I completely missed this guy named Clark but another guy named Shawn almost caught the ball I threw at him, so I quickly grabbed another one and threw it at his arm, causing him to lose what little control he had over the ball, and drop it. Clark, who was the only one left on the Ethan's team, besides himself, threw a ball at my legs. I quickly ducked and caught it, taking him out of the game; only Ethan and I were left, and there was only 5 minutes left in the game. For three minutes, Ethan and I competed in a seemingly endless cycle of throwing, dodging, ducking, and more throwing. He may have been a moron, but he was an athletic moron (seriously, the guy was on the football, hockey, and the wrestling team, he was a monster). Finally, with one minute left on the clock, I made my winning move. I took two balls, and threw one as hard as I could at Crosby's legs. He jumped over it, and with a roar, I threw the other ball as hard as I could at Crosby's face. The ball hit him hard, with a very loud PANG, lighting up his entire face, and he fell back four feet before crashing to the ground. Just like that, I had pulled off the biggest upset in dodgeball history, even Coach Johnson gave me props before sending me and the rest of the class to change back into our regular clothes.

After I was back in my T-shirt, jeans, and my gray hoodie I went back to my seat on the bleachers and grabbed my _Percy Jackson &amp; The Olympians: The Lightning Thief _book to read before the bell rang to go home. Suddenly, I noticed a huge shadow loom over me and I heard the sound of Crosby's voice muttering insults over my head.

"You must think you're pretty special huh you little punk," he said.

"Well I dunno Crosby," I responded. "After I just spanked you and your dogs well, yeah I do think i'm pretty special, wouldn't you agree?"

Crosby reached down, grabbed my book and threw it across the gym. I stood up fast with a look of the utmost hatred and loathing; I really, really hated this guy. The class was starting to circle us now, they knew what was about to go down.

"Aww, what's wrong little guy," he said in a mocking tone. "Did I hurt your wittle feelings, you gonna cry? I know I would if I didn't have any parents, no wonder you're so pathetic."

Everyone, including myself, had a shocked look on their faces. It was no secret that I was an orphan, but nobody ever had the guts to use that as ammo against me in a fight; then again after witnessing what I can do to someone in a fight, nobody ever gave me too much trouble, except Crosby.

"Crosby, shut up," I said in a dangerously calm voice.

"I suppose being an orphan wouldn't be so bad," he continued. "If you actually had a foster mom who wasn't an old bag of dirt."

"Crosby, shut up," I said louder; at this point I was beyond livid, my insides were starting to feel like lightning.

"But I guess you were the best piece of trash she could find in that dumpster of an orphanage you little-"

"CROSBY, SHUT UP!" I shouted as I balled my fist up and slammed it into his gut.

I don't know what happened next, I remember a loud boom, like thunder and when my vision wasn't so blurry I saw Crosby lying 10 feet away from where I was standing. His clothes were burnt and had holes in them, as if he was blasted with fire. Everyone was running and screaming as if they had seen something scary.

"DUDE DID YOU SEE THAT!?" Adrian asked one of his buddies.

"HIS HAND WAS ALL-" said another.

"WAS THAT LIGHTNING!?" said a screaming girl.

I had no idea what had just happened. All I knew was that whatever I just did to Crosby, it wasn't natural. I did the only thing I could do. I ran away.


	3. Ch:3 SHIELD Stops By For Dinner

**Chapter 3: S.H.I.E.L.D. Stops By For Dinner**

I ran as fast I could to my locker, quickly grabbed my things and made a beeline for the bus. Thank God that Crosby and his goons didn't ride on the same bus as me. In the state I was in, I would have probably blown it up with my freaky lightning powers. As I was sitting in the back seat of the bus, trying to slow my heart rate, I became lost in thought. What did I just do? I didn't mean to do whatever it is I did to Crosby; God I hope he wasn't dead. My heart was still racing. I had never gotten into trouble, at least i've never been caught doing something bad, but I was pretty sure that blasting my most hated enemy with 1000 volts of electricity, was cause for expulsion if not incarceration. I was so lost in thought, I didn't realize that the bus was at my house, until the driver called my name and woke me out of my day nightmare.

As I walked towards the door, my heart started to beat uncontrollably. Had the school already identified me as the electro guy? Were there cops inside my house, waiting to arrest me (not very smart on my part, considering there were no cop cars around)? Worst of all, did Doris already know what I did? What would she say to me? How would she look at me? I paused at the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. As soon as I was inside, I heard the sounds of the stove boiling water which meant Doris was cooking.

"Jason, is that you?" she asked me.

"Yeah Doris," I responded.

"How was your day, sweetie pie?"

"It was ok," I quickly lied, which I felt bad about. "Nothing special happened."

"Ok then; Jason, can you come here and get this flour on the top shelf for me?"

"Yeah Doris, I'm coming."

Before you meet my foster mom you need to know something first; she is the sweetest, kindest, and most thoughtful old lady you could ever hope to meet in this lifetime.

She was always patient with me; never pried for information or tried to make me change my behavior. She had this cool way of acknowledging the good things I did, and completely ignoring the bad ones. For example, when I came home from a fight, instead of scolding me or grounding me, our conversation went something like this:

Doris: "What happened sweetie,"

Me: "I got into a fight"

Doris: "Why?"

Me: "Because this guy threw eggs at my shirt,"

Doris: "Did you win?"

Me: "Sure did"

Doris: "Good job Jason, let's order pizza,"

She never beat me or punished me, even when I really deserved it. Plus, as if she couldn't get anymore awesome; she picked me out of all the kids at that stupid orphanage I used to live at. After my parents died, I lived at that orphanage for two years. During that time I was the worst, most unwell-behaved kid you could ever meet. Yet even so, Doris still chose me over all of the other kids. Even though everyone was always saying bad things about me, and saying that she should choose someone else, Doris said in loud clear words: "I want him." She's been raising me ever since and it's been the best seven years of my life.

Anyway, when I got into the kitchen, Doris was on a chair trying to reach the flour on the top shelf (seriously, she always does this; whenever she needs something, it's always where she can't reach it). I helped her down, and got the flour myself. By the way, Doris is about 5'5 in height, likes to wear jeans and weird shirts, and dies her hair different colors every other month (this month it was a light shade of pink).

"Thanks honey," she said as I handed her the flour.

"No problem," I said. "So,what are you cooking?"

"Your favorite, white rice with fried cabbage, ham chunks, and fried chicken; plus, apple pie and hot caramel surprise for dessert."

That immediately made my day, Doris knew that ever since I was little, this was my favorite dinner meal. Oh, and about the hot caramel surprise? You see, about five years ago, since I didn't like hot chocolate very much, Doris made me hot caramel instead. As the years went by, we started to add things into it like sprinkles, strawberries, cherries, even gummy worms. We only made the stuff on special occasions like birthdays and holidays, but I guess Doris was feeling spontaneous today.

"Awesome," I said with a huge grin on my face. "Can I help you cook today?"

"Sure Jason," she said. "Go upstairs and wash your hands, then we can get started."

I ran upstairs as fast I could, not wanting to spend a second longer away from the kitchen than I had to. Once I got to the upstairs bathroom, I flipped the switch to turn the light on and was unpleasantly surprised when the light bulb overloaded and popped. "_Oh yeah," _I remembered. "_Freaky lightning powers."_

"Jason?" Doris called up. "Is everything ok; I heard something break."

"It's fine Doris," I quickly responded. "The light bulb overloaded, I'll replace it.

I opened the storage closet that was directly across from the bathroom and carefully grabbed a light bulb. Then I flipped the switch off before screwing in the new light bulb and flipped it back up again. This time the bulb didn't pop, probably because I wasn't so hyper. "_Ok," _I thought. "_It looks like my powers respond to emotion; I was angry when I blasted Crosby, I was excited when I overloaded the light bulb, so as long as I stay cool, I can keep my powers contained." _I washed my hands, swept up the glass, and rejoined Doris in the kitchen.

"Ready to cook?" she asked me.

"You bet," I said.

Here's some free advice. Cook with your parents as often as you can. If you haven't already, start now. Before we got started, Doris handed me my blue cooking apron which said "Mommy's Little Helper" on it. While I was gone, she set up a playlist on her iPod for us to jam to while we worked. Another thing you should know about Doris is that she is a 15 year old fangirl trapped in an old lady's body. Seriously, she has more One Direction songs on her iPod than most school girls do, she has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a Snapchat; plus, she actually knows how to text, use text slang, and has a pillow pet. While we were cooking, we were listening to the best of One Direction, Big Time Rush, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. As we cooked together, I felt all of the troubles of my day, just fall off my shoulders; Doris had a way of helping me do that. So what if I blasted a guy with lightning? So what if I was probably going to be expelled from school and put into prison? All that mattered now was the fact that I was home with my foster mom, cooking food and having the time of my life.

After about 2 hours, the food was ready to be eaten, and I helped Doris move it to the table. We blessed the food, but before we actually got to eating, the doorbell rang. Immediately, my heart sank so low, it was probably in danger of being digested. We weren't expecting anyone, we didn't order anything, so the people at that door could only be one of the three: cops, lawyers, or federal agents.

"Well who could that be?" Doris asked. "Wait here Jase, I'll check on it.

"_Please," _I silently prayed to anyone that would listen to me. "_Please don't let it be cops, lawyers, or F.B.I._

"Jason?" Doris called in a very concerned tone. "Would you come here please; there are some men here who want to see you."

I slowly walked toward the front door, my heart racing faster than it ever had in my life. At the door I saw something more or less than I was imagining i'd see. There were three guys dressed; in Men In Black type suits. Two of them were tall stocky black guys wearing shades and grim expressions. They were flanking this shorter white guy with neat brown hair, calculating blue eyes and an expression that was a mix of amusement, seriousness, and judgement. His expression said something like: "_You don't look like much, but for some reason, I have to deal with you." _For some reason though, I didn't have the feeling of petrifying dread anymore. Sure, these guys looked like they were the real deal, but if they were gonna arrest me, they probably would have already. Plus their demeanor displayed that of people who wanted to parley. They wanted to talk to me before they took any other action.

"Hello Jason," said the white guy. " How are you doing?"

Ok, suddenly I was scared again. This guy knew my name, and I don't mean knew it as in he heard Doris say it; I mean he REALLY knew my name. Looking at this guy, I had the feeling that he knew everything about me, he probably read a file or something on who I was. I was starting to feel sick again.

"I'm fine," I responded. "Yourself?"

"Not too bad, can you step outside for a second, I need to talk to you alone."

"Now wait a minute," said Doris. "As his mother, I have the right to know what you want with my son."

"Foster mother, ma'am," said the white guy. "Rest assured, Jason is not in any trouble, but we do need to have a quick talk with him to discuss, recent events.

"It's ok Doris," I said. "I have something to tell you anyway, I didn't want to tell you like this, but I couldn't hide it for long."

I thought Doris was gonna get mad at me or cry or something but like I said, she's really good at the whole optimism thing.

"Fine," she said, trying for a smile. "Would you three gentlemen like to come in; we were just about to eat dinner, and there is more than enough for everyone."

Imagine eating your favorite meal in the presence of a lion, that could choose to tear you to shreds at any moment. Now, multiply that feeling by one-hundred, and you'll get the feeling of how I felt during dinner time. Agent Coulson, who introduced himself before we all sat down, never took his eyes off of me for more than 10 seconds at a time. He told us that he and his friends worked with S.H.I.E.L.D., which made me nothing short of terrified. I knew what S.H.I.E.L.D. was, everyone did. They were this super spy agency that handled weird things that happened in the world, like lightning shooting dodgeballers for example. He was very polite to Doris; complementing the house, her cooking, even making small talk about quilt patterns. The other guys pretty much just focused on their food (I didn't blame them, the food was fantastic). After dinner and dessert, everyone moved to the living room couches, and Agent Coulson put some kind of bracelet on my arm.

"Just tell me everything that happened today at school," he said. "Don't lie to me, the armband will shock you if you lie to me."

I didn't know what was more insultful. The fact that he automatically assumed I would lie, or the fact that he put a device on me that would SHOCK me if I lied. Seriously, you're gonna use electricity on me? That's just bad humor. Anyway, I told Coulson everything about my day; from the time before gym, the dodgeball game (I went into detail about that), and the moment where I fried Crosby with electricity and ran away. I willed my hands to sure with a little bit of electricity, to get my point across, which wasn't hard, considering how nervous I felt at the moment. Doris made a strangled yelp when she saw that, and I couldn't help but feel guilty. Doris could take a lot of things, but I was pretty sure this was way more than she could handle.

"So why did you run away?" Agent Coulson asked me.

"I was afraid," I responded. "I didn't know what I did, I didn't mean to do it; is Crosby ok?"

"He's currently in the hospital, he'll be fine, but he won't be in school for the rest of the year."

As if I couldn't feel any guiltier. I may have hated Crosby, but I never wanted to injure him so seriously; maybe I did deserve to go to prison.

"So what happens now?" I asked Agent Coulson, knowing fully what the answer was probably going to be.

"Now, you come with us to base, we have to-"

"Wait a minute," said Doris. "You said Jason wasn't in any trouble, so why does he have to go away with you?"

"That's classified information ma'am; just know that your foster son will be safe and, if all goes accordingly, should be back by Christmas Day.

"But-"

"It's alright Doris," I said. "We should cooperate with him, I'm not in trouble, and I'll be back soon, it's a win, win.

"Jason," Doris said with a very pleading look on her face.

I didn't have the heart to drag this on any further, so I reached out and gave her a big hug.

"Just promise me you'll be safe," she said.

"I will be" I said. "I promise i'll be back soon...Mom."

I could tell it made her feel better when I actually called her that. The only thing was I actually meant it. Doris had been there for me at a time when no one else could be. She was always patient with me, and made sure I was happy even if I didn't want to be. Whether or not it was biological, Doris was my mother, and I was going to call her that from now on. Agent Coulson pressed a button on his wristwatch.

"Area secure, stand down and report back to vehicles," he said.

Outside, I heard a sound that sounded very familiar to guns clicking, and being disarmed. I was going to go to my room and get some clothes ready, but Agent Coulson told me that would be unnecessary, and that I had to go with him now. I grabbed my hoodie, put it on, and followed him and his friends outside. Across from my house were at least a dozen black SUV's, Agent Coulson led me to the one in the middle and ushered me inside, he even let me ride shotgun. My mom was looking at me from the porch and I waved bye to her one last time, before I set off to parts unknown with Agent Coulson. He said that I wasn't in trouble and that I would be home by Christmas. The weird thing was, I believed him, but also got the feeling that I would not exactly be "safe", at least not the way I hoped I would be.


	4. Chapter 4: I Have A Chat With St Nick

**Chapter 4: I Have A Chat With St. Nick**

We drove for like 2 hours in a direction that I didn't know. We drove so far that at one point we weren't in a city area. All that surrounded us were trees, trees, and (you guessed it) more trees. Suddenly, Agent Coulson took a hard left, and we drove on a very rough dirt road for another five minutes, before stopping in the middle of a meadow. Agent Coulson and his friends got out of the van, so I assumed I could too. I walked around a bit to stretch my legs, which were on the verge of losing all feeling, before rejoining Agent Coulson and the others.

"So now what?" I asked Agent Coulson.

"Now," he said as he pressed another button on his watch. "We look up."

I did as he said, and nearly screamed. Floating above our heads was the legendary S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. For those of you that don't know, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier is basically a navy battleship with four huge turbines attached to it. How a navy battleship could float in mid air, I had no idea. The person who made this work, should be rich on the grounds that he or she is a complete technological superpower. Anyway, from the bottom of the Helicarrier, a blue tractor beam shot down, lifted the four of us off of the ground, and pulled us into the ship (if anyone says I was screaming and cursing on the way up, they are lying).

Once inside, the two black guys went around a corner on the right, and Agent Coulson led me a different way. I had to admit, on the inside the Helicarrier was way more impressive. The interior looked like something out of Star Trek. As I walked with Agent Coulson, I noticed some really cool things. For example, we passed a huge window that had a squad of agents shooting at a wave of Terminator looking robots. We walked past a few big screen TVs, that showed what I assumed to be, a simulation of two agents jet fighting, a squad of agents disarming a huge bomb looking device, and a guy with a plasma rifle shooting at glowing moving targets. I'd like to tell you more but if I did, i'd have to kill you (not even joking guys). After walking for like five minutes, Agent Coulson stopped at a metal door, swiped a keycard into a slot, which opened the door, and ushered me inside. Then he walked out, and the door shut me inside.

I don't know how long I was locked inside; 30 minutes, an hour maybe. However, I did know that I was fed up, and I wanted out. I felt on the metal doors and guessed that with a pretty good blast of lightning, I could blow them down; all that was left was for me to get charged up. I took a deep breath and began to focus. My powers reacted to my emotions, and right now I was very, very, frustrated. I didn't like being restricted, I didn't like being told what to do, and I didn't like being taken away from my mom. I was extremely frustrated and I was going to take it out on that stupid door. My hands started to surge; first small, but as I focused more, the surge got bigger, until my hands were completely hidden in the voltage. Just as I was about to go all thunder god on the door, some guy said: "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

I turned around with a small scare; I was pretty sure I was the only one in the room. I was wrong; out of the shadow of a corner a black guy wearing a trench coat and an eye patch walked toward me. He had the same calculating look in his (snigger) eye as Agent Coulson, did but his expression said something like: "_You might actually be worth all the trouble it took to bring you here."_ We stared each other down for like 10 seconds before we actually said words.

"So," he started. "You're the mutant."

"What did you just call me?" I snapped back.

"A mutant; basically you have an X gene that-"

"I know what a mutant is patchy, but why did you call me that?

"Patchy huh?" The guy chuckled. "Clever, really clever.

"Whatever dude, can I go home now?"

"I think we both know the answer to that question, Mr. Fuller."

"But why did I have to come here?" I asked. "Agent Coulson said I wasn't in any trouble, so why did you lock me in here?"

"I'll explain all of that later," he said as he pulled a keycard out of his coat. "For now, why don't you get some sleep; this keycard unlocks your room just a little ways away from here."

"What if I refuse?" I asked him. "What if I decide to blow that door down and get off of this ship my own way?"

"You're not gonna do that."

"Why?"

"Because that would be a pretty bad way of saying thank you, to the man that has kept you out of mutant prison."

My face must have been pretty priceless because I could tell the guy was trying to stifle the laugh building in his throat.

"Oh yeah wasn't expecting that were you?" he asked me. "Boy, you can't just blast people with thunder, and not expect the law to get involved."

"But-"

"S.H.I.E.L.D has kept the law off of your back, because we need you for a little something; all charges against you will be dropped, and you won't spend a second behind bars."

"And all I have to do is play your little game?"

"Well it's not a game, but yeah; just cooperate with us for a little while, and you'll be free to walk away.

I sighed, either way I didn't have a choice. Compared to life in prison, this guy offered a pretty sweet deal.

"I didn't ask for this," I said. "But now that i'm here, what do I do?"

The guy handed me the keycard.

"Walk out of this room, take two right turns and go to the fourth door on your left; that's where you'll be staying for now.

"Ok cool; and tomorrow?"

"Your alarm is set for 7 A.M., you'll have an hour to get dressed and eat breakfast, before meeting in room 135X for training."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, i'm Colonel Nick Fury, commanding officer of S.H.I.E.L.D., welcome to H.Q. now go get some sleep.

I followed Fury's directions, and found my room; door number 235J. I slipped my keycard in the slot, opened the door and walked inside. My room was actually pretty awesome. It had a bed, two drawers, and closets filled with clothes, a flat screen TV propped on the wall, it even had a mini fridge filled with snacks, and a bathroom with a shower and toiletries. On my bed was a watch and a set of PJs. I picked up the watch and looked at the time. 1:35 A.M. That didn't concern me; I was used to staying up late for homework, projects, and video games (sometimes all at once). I quickly changed into my PJs, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed. You wouldn't believe how quickly I fell asleep, but looking back on it, it was a pretty eventful day.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: I Make New Friends, Spar With Superheroes, and Have The Most Dangerous Gym Class Ever**

The next morning, two alarms woke me up; the one on my iPod, and the one on my watch. Despite the little amount of sleep I got, I still felt energized, like I was plugged up to a generator while I slept. I got up, quickly took a shower, brushed my teeth, and went to my closets. I picked out a blue T-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it, a black pair of jeans, my regular shoes, and a black jacket, which I left unzipped. While I was combing my dreads, I noticed something strange about me. My eyes, that used to be dark brown, were now electric blue. Despite everything that had happened to me yesterday, this was the most shocking of all. It was like a brand, no matter how hard I would try to hide it, now there was a permanent symbol of how different I was. To be honest, I didn't know if I could take much more.

After I was done getting dressed, I walked out of my room and checked the time: 7:30. I had half an hour to eat before boot camp, so I asked for directions and quickly made my way down to the cafeteria. Let me tell you something cool. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows how to eat. Their cafeteria had everything you could imagine. All types of pancakes, lots of bacon, every type of cereal, and anything else associated with breakfast. I got blueberry, strawberry, and mango pancakes. Also, a plate full of bacon, some Cinnamon Toast Crunch with strawberry milk, blueberry muffins, strawberry yogurt, and a glass of apple juice. After I got my food, I sat down at an empty table that had a nice view of the sky. I blessed my food, but right before I started to eat, some guy shouted "Hey you!"

I turned around and saw a guy in a blue football jersey, sitting next to a blonde girl wearing a denim hat, and a sleeveless denim jacket with a long sleeve white shirt. Immediately, I was on guard, because I did not have pleasant relationships with jocks, and the girl looked like the popular type, which I did not mingle well with either. However, their faces said differently. The guy wearing the football jersey had a humble and friendly look in his eyes. Plus his brown hair was a bit untidy, which was not the usual look for a conceited jock. The girl, though definitely not a stranger to popularity, had a kind and gentle demeanor; plus she looked kind of athletic, like she could play ball really good. Even so, I politely waved hello, and turned around to eat my food.

"If you don't come over here," called the jersey guy. "We're coming over to you."

I shrugged my shoulders, sure that they were bluffing. I was wrong. They took their food trays, literally flew from their table, and landed right across from where I was sitting. The girl actually glew with golden fiery light as she flew, and cooled off when she landed.

"Dude, were not gonna bite you," said the jersey guy. "Hopefully you won't bite us either, my name's Grant, Grant Jackson; it's very nice to meet you."

He extended his hand, and I shook it, not wanting to be rude. Either way, it looked like these two were here to stay; I might as well get used to them.

"Jason Fuller," I responded. "It's good to meet you as well; who's your friend?"

"Allyson Grace," she said, quickly reaching out her hand. "I really like your hair."

"Thanks," I said shaking her hand. "So why are you two here?"

"We don't know," said Grant. "Probably for the same reason as you; by the way, what can you do?

"I can shoot lightning out of my hands."

"Is that it?"

"So far, yes."

"That's cool bro; as for me, I can fly, I have super strength, I have a lot of stamina, and as far as I know, I'm invulnerable.

"Awesome," I said feeling a little bit outclassed. "What about you, Allyson?"

"Oh me?" she said shyly. "I have the power to absorb an endless amount of solar energy; with this energy I can fly, shoot projectiles, make constructs, and heal any wounds through song."

"Whoa," Grant and I said at the same time. Clearly, she was way more in control in terms of power than we were.

"So are the two of you going to training after breakfast?" I asked them.

"Yup," said Grant. "Dude we should probably focus on eating now, we only have 25 minutes before crunch time."

With that, everyone ate more and talked less. If this is what having friends was like, then it wasn't so bad. In fact, I was actually starting to like these two.

After breakfast, the two black guys that came to my house, showed up to escort the three of us to room 135X. We walked about 5 minutes before actually getting there. Inside, the room resembled that of a high school gym except for the fact that most gyms don't have walls made of metal, and lethal weapons racked on the walls. Colonel Fury was inside ,already waiting for us and I swear it's like he almost smiled at the sight of us. That didn't make me feel any better about what was coming up.

"Welcome children," he said. "We have a lot of training to do, and little time to do it, so listen and don't ask any questions."

Allyson immediately raised her hand; once a school girl always a schoolgirl.

"Yes miss Grace?" asked Fury.

"Sorry to ask you a question when you told us not to Mr. Fury, but who exactly are we training with?

"I'm glad you asked miss Grace, and it's Colonel Fury," said Fury. "Today, the three of you will receive training from Nightcrawler and Storm of the X-Men; also from Luke Cage and Ms. Marvel."

At first, I thought there was no way four well known superheroes were going to bother training three high school kids, but sure enough, Fury pressed a button on his watch, and the four of them appeared in a flash of light. Luke Cage was this big black guy with huge muscles wearing black workout pants and a yellow muscle shirt. Ms, Marvel was a woman with flowing blonde hair wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a crimson leather jacket. Storm was a black woman with silver-grey hair, and white eyes; she was dressed in a black tank top and black workout pants. Finally, Nightcrawler was this guy or sort of guy with blue skin, elf ears, and a demon tail. He was also dressed in a black tank top and workout pants.

At the sight of these heroes, Grant burst into applause, while Allyson kept bouncing on the balls of her feet squealing: OMG, OMG, OMG. Me, I just smiled and acted polite. Don't get me wrong, I was definitely a little starstruck but like I said, I don't have too much love for heroes.

After the initial hype had settled down, Fury broke us off into groups. For thirty minutes we would spend time with a certain hero, working on different combat aspects, then we would switch until everyone had been at the stations Fury had chosen for us. For my first station I would be with Luke Cage and Nightcrawler working on armed and unarmed combat. I shed my jacket, stretched out a little, and prepared myself to spar hand-to-hand with one of the world's strongest superheroes. I looked over at Grant and Allyson, who were doing the same, except they were in midair. I wasn't insecure about much and this was probably stupid but I was starting to feel a bit inferior to my peers. Grant could fly, had super strength, and was almost invincible. Allyson could combust into sunlight, fly, blast stuff, make stuff, and heal people with her most likely beautiful singing. All I could do was shoot lightning out of my hands, which was only good for blasting longtime rivals and recharging batteries.

"Yo kid," said Luke. "Get your head out of the clouds, and into the fight."

"Oh," I said still shaking off my daydream. "Sorry about that."

"It's cool man, just focus on the task at hand."

"Ok, so what are we doing?"

"For fifteen minutes, you and I are going to spar hand-to-hand, you can use your lightning powers for melee purposes, but you can't blast me from a distance."

"That is so not fair dude, I don't have super strength."

"I can't blast lightning out of my hands; your enemy won't care about what's fair, so just shut up and fight."

I took a deep breath and concentrated on one emotion: anger. Anger was easy, anger was all i've ever known since I was seven, and now I was going to take out some of my anger on Luke Cage's face. My fists surged with voltage, in fact I couldn't even see my hands anymore, I was generating that much lightning. Luke took this as a sign to attack. He rushed at me and swung with a right hook, that a dodged by ducking. He kicked at me while I was down but I rolled backwards, getting out of range of his fists and then rushing to counter attack. Luke did the same, and charged at me; right before we collided, I jumped over him, turned in mid air, and kicked him in the back. It probably didn't hurt him very much, but at least I managed to land a blow. Again, Luke charged at me, but this time I was ready. I trotted backwards, until Luke lunged to tackle me; then, I did a backwards cartwheel, that would end up with my feet planting themselves in Luke's chin. Right before impact I thought how awesome it would be if my feet could catch lightning. BOOM! Luke caught a lightning kick under his chin and crash landed a few feet away. As he was getting up I jumped on his back, hoping to keep him off balance, and continue pounding him. Worst. Idea. Ever. Luke grabbed the back of my shirt, and threw me halfway across the room. Quicker than I could have ever anticipated, he caught up, and assaulted me with punches to the chest and face before grabbing me and throwing me again. At this point everything hurt, but I knew I couldn't stay on the ground for too long, Luke would be on my butt any second. I quickly got up to the sight of Luke charging at me, and made an attempt to dodge. Unfortunately, Luke saw this coming. He feinted an attempt to tackle me, and when I moved, he actually tackled me; I can still feel the impact my head made on the floor. Through the blurry haze of my vision, I saw Luke raise a fist, and I quickly moved my head out of the way before it came crashing down. Next I grabbed Luke's face, who quickly got off of me, due to the fact that I had just super-charged his face with voltage. I quickly got up to face Luke, ignoring my aching body pains, but this time something was different; Luke was throwing a punch, but it was like he was moving slower, much slower. At first I thought he was just messing with me, but when I looked around at everyone else, it was the same. Grant and Ms. Marvel, who were locked in aerial combat, were punching each other at the speed of snails. Allyson and Storm who were blasting each other were also moving slow; in fact Storm's lightning bolts looked as though they were being frozen. I didn't know what was going on so I decided to test it out. I moved closer to Luke, who was still on the verge of punching me, and poked him in the chest. It was if he didn't feel it, or see that I was now in butt-kicking distance. I avoided his fist and walked around him; he very slowly turned around with a confused look on his face. At this point, I decided to put him out of his slo-mo misery. I focused more lightning energy on my fists, and punched Luke as many times as I could in the face, chest, and torso, dodging and countering his attacks with laughable ease. Finally, I backflipped lightning kicked him in the face (I didn't know I could do that), landed perfectly, and power kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backwards. To add insult to injury, while he was still falling, which was also going in slow motion, I got a running start, and flying kicked him the the chest with more speed and power than I ever knew I had. I must have really put myself into that one, because Luke flew straight into a wall at above normal speed, and we started the fight in the middle of the gym.

"Nice moves kid," Luke said as he slowly got up. "Why didn't you say you had super speed powers?"

"Because I don't." I said really confused like.

"Yeah you do, for the last few seconds of that fight I couldn't touch you; I could hardly see you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Take a look." he said pulling an iPod like device out of his pocket.

He pressed some kind of app, and messed around with the device until it shot out a holographic screen replaying the fight. Not to toot my own horn, but looking at myself from a distance, I was pretty impressive. I watched the fight with Luke, up until the moment where he went super slo-mo. Instead I saw me, or I assume it was me, beating the living crap out of Luke, in less than five seconds. Even more surprising, was the blurry image of me kicking Luke while in midair, except a bolt of lightning was coming out of my foot.

"Whoa." I said.

"Yeah." said Luke.

"Sorry about that last kick"

"It's ok, i've been hit much harder, but it's obvious there is more to you than just lightning."

"Cool,"

"Very much, now get ready, we still have 10 more minutes of sparring to do."

From then on out, the match wasn't too much of a contest. I found out that making my super speed work, was to build up momentum like a jet on a runway. For ten straight minutes, Luke was subject to an unending flurry of thunder powered kicks and punches, until it was time for my lesson with Nightcrawler.

To start off, Nightcrawler directed me to a wall that had various types of swords on it, and instructed me to choose one. I chose a leaf shaped blade (not literally, just think of the sword Percy Jackson uses) with a curved hilt that would be good for locking an opponent's blade, while Nightcrawler chose a blade that looked like it was used in George Washington's day. Next, the two of us stretched out for a minute, so I could rub off my soreness from my match with Luke. While we were stretching, I took a look at how Grant and Allyson were doing. Grant was still fighting Ms. Marvel in midair, holding his own; the two fought with so much strength, power, and speed, that it reminded me of a battle I saw on Dragon Ball Z. Allyson on the other hand, was doing much better. She was gracefully moving through the air like a pro, assaulting Storm with blasts of sun, blocking attacks with sun shaped shields, and hitting storm with various constructs like a sledgehammer, a giant fist, even a lightning bolt made of sun energy. If this was the start of a new superhero team (hint hint), Allyson was definitely going to be the leader.

After we were done stretching, Nightcrawler and I got into our respective defensive stances, ready to duel. Now I know what you're probably thinking, but i've watched a lot of sword fighting movies, plus a lot of sword fighting technique vids on YouTube by people who study the art, so I was more prepared for this fight than you think I am. I charged at Nightcrawler with a war cry, and brought my blade down hard in a vertical slice. Nightcrawler simply backflipped, kicking me under the chin and while in midair, kicked me in the chest sending me tumbling backwards. Luckily, I was able to hold on to my blade, because blue boy wasn't done yet. He rushed at me and quickly jabbed and thrusted at me a numerous amount of times. If it wasn't for my quick reflexes I probably would've been skewered on the third jab. Even so, I was just barely holding my own, it was all I could do to block and dodge this guy's sword. The next 10 minutes went by in a flurry of stabs, cuts, blocks, counters, and parries. Nightcrawler and I went back and forth (mostly back on my part) trying to finish the fight. Even though I could tell Nightcrawler was taking it easy on me, I had no intention of being swept aside like a training doll. Yet, everything I tried had failed. When I tried for a stab, Nightcrawler dodged and countered. If I tried for a slash, Nightcrawler would either parry, dodge and attack my torso area, or dodge and attack my legs. Again, only my reflexes were keeping me in the game. Finally, with five minutes left before the end of the match, I made my move. I tapped into the momentum I had built up over the course of the fight, and unleashed it to travel faster (I'm gonna start calling it Speed Mode; sounds cooler). I was not traveling as fast as I was when I was pummeling Luke, but it was enough to give me a decent edge. I slashed, stabbed, and even used my legs to push Nightcrawler on the defensive, while I attacked at what few openings he left me. Even with my speed, Nightcrawler was clearly the better swordsman; dodging and blocking even my best attacks and maneuvers. However, he didn't have lightning powers, and I was going to exploit that weakness. Nightcrawler downward slashed at me, which I blocked with my sword. Next, I pushed the blade up and kicked him as hard as I could in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards. Finally, I charged at him ,and spun around before slashing at him. This was a risky move, because a fighter should never turn his back to his opponent. Plus, the whole sword spin attack you see on TV is not as effective in real life as you think it is; the only reason I risked such a move was because I had the speed to pull it off. Anyway, while my back was turned, I charged my blade with lightning and when Nightcrawler blocked my attack like I knew he would, his blade shattered like ice. Nightcrawler was clearly surprised by my trick and as he was staggering backwards, I rushed in, and attempted to stab him. However, right before the blade made impact, he vanished in a puff of blue smoke. Suddenly, I felt a lot of weight on my back, but before I could counter, everything went dark, and when the lights came back, I was free falling to the floor. I crashed hard, and before I could get up, I felt the tip of a sword at my neck. I was so stupid; I had completely forgot he had teleportation powers. Nightcrawler helped me to my feet and congratulated my efforts with a huge grin. Which by the way, is kind of unnerving with the yellow eyes, blue skin, and fangs.

"Good job, Jason," he said.

"Not good enough," I said. "You still beat me."

"Don't beat yourself up mein friend, that was very good for a first try, we'll have many more sessions, so you will improve."

"Ok cool, thanks for the awesome match, I had a lot of fun"

I shook Nightcrawler's hand (which felt weird considering he only had three fingers), and moved on to my next station with Ms. Marvel. Because Allyson had put the smackdown on Storm, who was completely exhausted, Grant and Allyson would both be at the station I was at, alternating between Luke and Nightcrawler. In the meantime, I would be working with Ms. Marvel on ground level ranged fighting. Basically, this meant for one hour, I was gonna get blasted around the gym, while trying to figure out how to access my inner Zeus.

"Ready kid?" Ms Marvel asked me.

"No, not really," I responded.

"Too bad,"

Quicker than I could react, Ms. Marvel shoot at me with a photon blast. Now you'd probably think that i'd dodge this, due to my super speed and quick reflexes, but the truth was, I wasn't ready, and I covered my face with my arms (like that would help) while I fumbled backwards in a really heroic manner. Lucky for me, my powers activated on time to save my sorry butt. Right before the blast connected, I felt a bump, as if the blast had hit something that wasn't me. I lowered my arms to find, to my surprise and delight, that a force field of electric energy had saved me from being a splat on the wall. Ms. Marvel was still blasting away at the barrier, but it was still standing strong. On a hunch, I balled my right hand into a fist, and struck the barrier. The result was an electrical shock wave that blew Ms. Marvel (and everyone else) off of their feet. Ms Marvel, though blown off her feet, simply rolled, got on her feet again, and resumed the attack.

For the first few minutes of the fight, Ms. Marvel was in charge. This wasn't because she was stronger, quicker, or more experienced than me; (although all of these were true) it was because my attacks were too slow. For example, when Ms. Marvel got up, she blasted me with a volley of photon blasts. I dodged them all and willed a bolt of lightning to shoot out of my right hands. She dodged this too, and blasted another turret of photon blasts at me. This time, instead of dodging, I willed both of my hands to release a crazy amount of voltage that I focused into a mega lightning bolt. The bolt blasted right through Ms. Marvel's volley attack, and pelted her right in the chest (I assume it was the chest, everything went bright when the bolt made impact, I couldn't see her much). Surprisingly, she quickly got up and resumed her relentless photon blast attack. This time, Ms. Marvel saw right through my tactics and broke them down. When I blasted her with a lightning bolt, she dodged it, and threw like ten or twenty blasts at me; I was forced to resort to dodging and rarely attacking. It went on like this for a while: I blast, she dodges, she shoots, I run. To make matters worse, Ms. Marvel decided to blast at me from the air (cheating if you consider the fact that we were practicing ground ranged battling). Now, she had more room to maneuver, more speed to work with, and I had less chances to dodge, and even if I did, from such a good vantage point, Ms. Marvel could predict where I would be, and strike there. At one point, she had me pinned down, and I had to create another barrier to avoid being bombarded. However, this time Ms. Marvel was serious. She created a super charged photon blast, about the size of a jumbo beach ball, and hurled it at me. The blast crushed my force field on impact, and sent me flying backwards into the wall. Although, the force of the blast broke through my barrier, the initial impact didn't hurt too badly, so I was able to roll out of the way before any more of Ms. Marvel's blasts did anymore damage to me. However, I was still at the same place I was when the fight started. Ms. Marvel in the air and on the attack. while I was on the ground scrambling around for dear life. I couldn't hit her while she was up there, I knew that for certain. I wished there was a way to bring her down; for a brief moment, I imagined lightning striking her in the back. CRAKK! Suddenly, Ms. Marvel plummeted to the floor, after a thundercloud suddenly materialized and struck her with lightning. It was in that moment that I decided to get a bit more creative with my powers, and really see what I could do.

For the next 50 minutes, I fought like a beast. After I realized my powers could do more than just straight lightning bolts, I decided to experiment further. For starters, instead of shooting straight and focused bolts of lightning, I willed my lightning to turn into balls, that I blasted at Ms. Marvel. This made a tremendous difference in the fight, because now I could attack, as well as defend more effectively. For example, one time Ms. Marvel blasted another volley of photon blasts at me. I saw this coming, and used a bolt of lightning to blast through her volley; although she did dodge the impact of the bolt. However, I expected this, and unleashed my own volley of lightning blasts at Ms. Marvel, about ten in total. Every blast made impact, and sent her tumbling, not soaring backwards. I kept at it, knowing that if I held back for a second, Ms. Marvel would capitalize. For a while, we battled on, matching each other blast for blast, although I did get a few good hits in. For example, after we had reached 45 straight minutes of fighting, I figured out how to use my speed powers to make my blasts move faster and hit harder. This technique worked by me concentrating my speed powers solely in my hands, and resonating into my blasts. By doing this, I could fire like 20 individual shots in 2 seconds. Also, instead of merely blunt impact, I willed my blasts to explode on impact; this helped keep Ms. Marvel off balance, and give me an advantage. Finally, after a long and brutal battle, and with only 10 minutes left in the fight, I decided to try and end it early. Don't get me wrong, I still had fuel to burn but I could tell Ms. Marvel was up to something, this fight was a bit too easy for my liking; better to end it now on my terms than wait for her to pull out her ace. I lured Ms. Marvel into a false sense of security by keeping up our game of blaster cat and mouse; then while she was off guard, I tapped into my Speed Mode, making her, and everything else in the world seem frozen. While in the Speed Mode, I weaved through the photon blasts, and absorbed all of the electrical blasts that were also frozen in midair. With this energy, I slapped the ground with both of my hands, creating surge that traveled across the floor to where Ms. Marvel was standing. A new thing I had learned at that moment, was that while I used my lightning powers, it would deteriorate how much I could tap into Speed Mode; even now Ms. Marvel was slowly starting to move again. I knew I didn't have long, so I quickly pulled out my ace. I created a thunderbolt, yes an actual thunderbolt like the one Zeus would use,charged it with a ton of voltage, and hurled it at Ms. Marvel. The blast itself was so powerful that it knocked everyone off off their feet (again), and threw them various directions, including myself. The good news was that everyone was ok, although my friends and the other heroes were starting to give me dirty looks. The bad news was that everyone was ok, including Ms. Marvel who dusted off her clothes (what were those things made of, they could survive an atomic bomb) and started to glow.

When I say she started to glow, I mean she would give Allyson, the sun queen, a run for her money. The energy I felt radiating off of her was incredible, scary in fact, but what was even more frightening, was what she did next. She screamed a crazy Amazon like battle cry, and blasted me with enough energy to blast through at least 10 walls. In that instant time froze without me even needing to tap into Speed Mode; maybe it was a reflex or maybe, in the moment of certain death, my body decided to start the habit of freezing time. What I did next was so impulsive, and so dangerous, that I should have been on the top 10 list for most troubled mutant kids on the planet. I immediately felt a huge surge of energy generating from my body, where all this power came from I didn't know, but I did know I had to release it at that moment, or else it would explode inside me; which would not be a good way to kick off the holidays. I willed the immense energy to transfer through my arms, which felt both exhilarating and excruciating. The energy output was unbelievable, I literally was lost in the voltage I couldn't see my hands, arms, or even my body, it was a miracle I could make out Ms. Marvel's image to aim at properly. I placed my hands together, focused all of my energy at my trainer, and let it rip (for those of you that don't know, that move is called Final Flash by Vegeta, a character on Dragonball Z, look it up it's a good show). The two energy blasts, mine's and Ms. Marvel's, collided with each other in a deadly intense power battle. I could feel that even with all this power, I would still lose if I didn't dig deeper; so that's what I did. I looked inside myself, and willed all of the energy I had, even my Speed Mode Momentum, to assist my Final Flash, and help me end this fight. You would not believe how fast the response was. Immediately, my blast quadrupled in size and strength, plus, with my Speed Mode momentum pushing it on, the blast completely steamrolled Ms. Marvel's and crashed into her. On impact, the blast propelled Ms. Marvel into the steel wall, also causing a major electrical surge throughout the entire complex setting everything electrical powered or metal based on a power frenzy. Finally, after 5 seconds of impact, my energy blast dissipated and I actually got to survey the damage. The most shocking thing was how powerful the blast really was and how it affected my opponent. Ms. Marvel was shot through not one, not two, but 10 steel walls. At first I was worried that I had killed her, but she briefly got up, before fainting and crashing to the floor again, so at least I had confirmation that she was sort of ok. The next thing I realized was how spent I was. I had no energy left in my body, and I crumpled to the ground.

Through the haze of my blurry vision I saw the silhouettes of Grant and Allyson rushing towards me. A few seconds later I felt Grant slowly pick me up (not bridal style), and put my right arm around his shoulder in an attempt to keep me upright.

"DUDE!" he shouted. "THAT WAS FREAKING EPIC, YOU DESTROYED HER!"

"uhhruugglahhhr," I responded which was extremely exhausted for, '_Thanks, now please stop screaming in my ear and give me a ton of red bull.'_

"Grant," said Allyson. "Stop screaming in his ear, and let me help him (I was really starting to like this girl).

"Ok, what do you need me to do?"

"Set him down on the floor- NO DON'T DROP HIM!"

Apparently to Grant, "set him down on the floor", meant drop your new friend flat on his face; I made a mental note to zap him as soon as I had the energy for it. After I was put on the ground with such gentle care, Allyson knelt down, repositioned me so I was in a more comfortable state, and then began to gently touch my chest, arms, hands, and face. (her hands were really soft). Then, she hovered her hands over my chest, and began to sing. Her voice was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life, like an entire choir of angels singing through one person. As she sung, my body filled with a sudden warmth, like the kind you get when you walk outside after being locked in a cold classroom for two hours. To be honest, I felt as though my body was glowing, and maybe it was, Allyson did have sun powers after all. After she stopped singing, I felt….better. I didn't feel completely re-energized, but it was good enough for me to sit up straight and form clear words.

"So how do you feel buddy?" Grant asked me. "You still don't look so good."

"Maybe because you dropped me on my face you bonehead," I snapped.

"Oh, sorry about that man, I didn't think."

I was gonna say something like "_no, you didn't_" but Grant had such an "i'm sorry" look on his face, that I couldn't stay mad at him. The guy was a moron, but he was still a good guy.

"It's ok bro," I said. "Just don't ever do it again, or i'll zap you."

We both laughed for a little while.

"But seriously," said Allyson who still had a concerned look in her eyes. "How are you feeling, are you completely re-energized; you don't look like it."

"Well," I started. "I'm not completely re-energized…..BUT you still did a very good job," I quickly added because Allyson looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"But, my healing songs always work! On me, other people, even Grant!"

I looked at Grant with a quizzical look on my face.

"Oh," he started. "After I fought Ms. Marvel and Luke Cage, I was bone tired dude. I fought with everything I had, so Allyson did her magic song healy thing on me, and all my energy came back, I felt stronger than ever."

"So why doesn't it work on you?" Allyson asked me.

"I dunno," I said. "Try it again, I did release a huge amount of energy, maybe I need another dose of sun energy."

"No," said Allyson flatly. "It never takes more than one song to heal anyone, it can literally bring them back from the brink of death, and heal up the most gruesome of all cuts and gashes."

She said this with so much certainty, that I could tell she spoke from experience; somewhere out there, a lot of people owed Allyson their lives.

"Besides, I can sense that your body has had too much exposure to my sun energy, any more and you'd burn up, literally."

"Really?" I asked.

"Well either that, or you'd get cancer so severe, you'd die within two hours,"

How she knew that, I didn't wanna know. But it was clear I wasn't getting anymore sun healing.

"Maybe he needs a different type of recharge," said Grant. "Maybe the electrical kind."

He looked in the direction where I blasted Ms. Marvel through 10 walls, sure enough, there was a hanging power cable surging with voltage.

"Electrical huh?" I said to myself.

I got up and walked towards the power cable, ignoring Allyson's frantic cries to stop me. Once I got there, I steeled my nerves, knowing that either this would work, or I would be committing suicide. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed the cable. Imagine drinking a gallon made of: Red Bull, Monster, espresso, and the most caffeinated sugary mixed coffee imaginable. The rush of power I felt was 10 times the rush, energy, and power. I felt all of my energy return, and then some; I felt like I could run around the world, fight forever, and take on an army in one day without ever tiring. I quite literally leaped 10 feet in the air, and landed perfectly on my feet; I ran back to Allyson and Grant, grinning like a madman.

Because we finished this part of our training ahead of schedule, and because my Final Flash caused a few technical problems with the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s training rooms, Fury gave us 30 minutes to rest up before moving on to our next exercise (not that any of us actually needed any rest). We used this time to talk, and get to know each other better. Since none of us wanted to sit on the floor for thirty minutes, we decided to have our conversation in the air. Grant and Allyson were hovering in the air sitting criss cross applesauce (sorry, force of habit), and Allyson made me a sofa constructed from sun energy, hovering across from her, to sit on which by the way, felt so nice and warm; it was perfect for taking naps. For like ten minutes, we talked about basic stuff like: where we were from, what we liked to do for fun, favorite sports, music, books, etc. As it turned out, we all had a lot in common. We all share the same love of: WWE wrestling, extreme sports, rock music, and roller coasters. We all talked about how and when we got our powers. I told my story first, making sure to go in detail about my epic dodgeball comeback, and I tried to make my incident with Crosby sound less horrific than it actually was. Grant was really chill about it, even said Crosby got what he deserved. Allyson on the other hand was somewhat horrified that I could do that to someone; she put her hands over her mouth and had a really shocked look on her face, I tried not to feel overly bad about that. Grant as it turns out developed his powers a few hours after I did. He was at football practice somewhere in Nebraska, and made football history when he trucked a quarterback and sent them both flying from the 10 yard line to the opposing End Zone in one leap. I didn't think Grant could take a lot of things seriously, but as he told his story, his expression turned stony, and he told the story as if it were a bitter memory. I got the feeling that back at home, there was an open position on Grant's football team. Allyson on the other hand, developed her powers for a little over a year ago. She was singing at her Christmas play back at her hometown in Alabama, when she suddenly began to glow in the middle her solo as a Christmas angel. Because it was a Christmas play, and she was playing the part as an angel, the crowd thought it was all a part of the play, and Allyson wasn't exposed as a mutant. For a year, Allyson, with the help of her parents, learned how to use her powers and effectively hide them in public (no wonder she was such a pro, she had a head start). That surprised me, because most parents would be mortified to learn that they had a mutant child. Yet Allyson's parents accepted it, helped her master it, and by the sounds of it, were happy she was a mutant. We talked about this stuff and more until our thirty minutes were up, and we had to go to room 134X for our next assignment. Thinking back on it, I realized that was the first time I had ever hung out with friends.

Once inside room 134X, which was almost the same as 135X but much bigger, and with no weapons racked on the walls, Fury and the other heroes walked into some kind of both that had a dark window shielding them, meaning I could not see in at all.

"Ok kids," said Fury (when was he gonna stop calling us kids). "This will be your first test to see how you do as a team, and it starts right now."

An alarm suddenly went off, and quicker than I could blink a million lights flashed. When they dissipated, we found ourselves surrounded by the same Terminator looking robots that I saw last night; the only difference was that there was only three of us, there were at least 500 of them. Some of them were smallish and skeleton like, but I could tell they were much stronger than they looked. Others were much more intimidating, with huge bodies, a muscular build (assuming robots can have muscle), and laser cannons on their arms and shoulders. We were way outnumbered but maybe not outgunned; before I could get a plan together however, Grant charged forward with a yell, crashing through a dozen robots, and went smashing away. I knew robots couldn't feel or display emotion, but one of them looked at Grant, looked back at me, and I may have been imagining it, but his face said something like: "_Is your friend nuts?" _I did the only thing I could do; thought to myself: "_Yes he is", _and blasted the robots head off with a bolt of lightning.

For like 5 minutes,the entire fight was chaos. Allyson and I managed to stay together for a while, blasting down robots with sun blasts and lightning bolts but eventually we became separated due to the rush of robots. I didn't like this. With Grant all on his own, doing his own thing, Allyson and I were already at a disadvantage. But now we were all on our own, and it was only a matter until the divided became the conquered. For a while though, I was doing well on my own. I blasted through like 20 runts with bolts of lightning and when they were getting closer I switched to blasts which proved to be just as effective for making scrap metal. Just when I thought maybe I could turn this around, get back to Allyson, and then make our way to Grant, I met my first giant robot (I'll call them Titans from now on). He looked at me and his eyes flashed like a car blinker on alarm mode. After that, all of the runts backed up, refrained from attacking me, and formed a circle around the two of us. I knew what was going down, i'd been in plenty of these situations, the big guy wanted to fight me one on one, he wanted to make an example out of me. I started the fight by blasting him in the chest with a huge lightning bolt. The blast hit him considerably hard, and caused him to stumble backwards, but it didn't damage him as much as I had hoped. Plan B, I made my hands surge with voltage and tried pounding him with my fists. Yeah, that didn't work out too well. For starters, metal is much tougher to damage with your fists than flesh, even with voltage fists. My hand didn't break, thank God, but the Titan grabbed me by the neck and lifted me off of the ground. He raised a fist, and I knew what was coming next; so before I said goodbye to my face, I blasted him in the face with another lightning bolt. I must have been pretty desperate for him to let go, because this time the Titan actually crashed into his buddies, taking out maybe a good 10 or 15 for me. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough of a blast to trash the Titan, and he got up and charged me. I charged him back, and right before collision, (or should I say trample) I baseball slid between his legs, tapped into my Speed Mode, and while the Titan was going slo mo, I jumped on his back, grabbed his neck, and released a major electrical surge that traveled through his body (mostly his insides, where all of his wiring probably was), making him go into a crazy seizure-like state. Yet that still wasn't enough to put him out of commission, cuz he grabbed me and threw me off of his back (how many people were gonna throw me off of their back today?). Fortunately, he must have been severely weakened, because I only hit the floor with minor force and I didn't get thrown very far. The only downside was that apparently the Titan had had enough (he knew he was losing), and the runts began to join the fight. I didn't have a lot of Speed Momentum left in me, but I did have enough to make them slow down for a while. While in Speed Mode, I created a thunderbolt, supercharged it, and used it to slice the Titan, who was already in bad shape, in half. Before I could attack any of the other robots, I heard Grant shout "YAAAAHHH!", followed by the sound of metal being pounded. I looked up, and saw a damaged Titan falling towards me. Naturally, I threw my thunderbolt at it, causing it explode into scrap that harmlessly rained down in all directions.

Afterwards, I quickly created another super charged thunderbolt, and went hacking away at my enemies. Even without my super speed, I was pretty quick on my feet. Plus, with the help of Nightcrawler, my skills with armed combat greatly improved, especially when I was armed with lightning, and my enemies were unarmed. I did a 180 and slashed through 20 runts as if they were butter. Then I turned around to face the surge of enemies heading my way. Before they could reach me, I swung my thunderbolt, and imagined a shock wave mowing them all down. It worked. The few that remained rushed at me, but were quickly cut down, although I had a new surge of about 50 to deal with. They came at me, and I slashed them down as they came in range, taking about 30 of them out before the had me backed up against a wall. Unfortunately for them, I anticipated this. As soon as my back touched the wall I unleashed a mega blast of lightning that came out of my chest (I was thinking about Iron Man's unibeam blast at the time) taking down the other 20 and giving me some room to think. I could hear Grant tearing away at other robots, but he was too far away, and in way too deep for me to try and regroup with. Allyson on the other hand was a lot closer to me, and from the looks of it, she was doing pretty good. I caught sight of runts being blasted to bits by sun blasts, runts being scattered by the swing of a giant sun hammer, plus Allyson hovering in midair, using a giant fist to clobber what I can only assume was either a titan or a major pack of runts. Anyway, she was a lot closer, and there wasn't too much blockage around her, so I ran in her direction. Needless to say, I was met with resistance from all ends. There were runts coming at me left and right, front and back. To get them off my back, I created a giant electrical explosive wave that destroyed a lot of my aggressors, and blew away many more. Then I used my thunderbolt to hack down more as I went along. However, when I looked outwards, I realized that I would not get far even with a thunderbolt; especially if it was only 3 feet long. So, in mid swing of another wave of runts, I willed my thunderbolt to become much larger, about the size of a spear. The result was a clattered heap of robots who didn't see it coming. I mowed down runts as quickly as the stepped up, taking 5-10 of them with one swing. The thunder spear was also good for helping me keep the robots from surrounding me. For example, just when I was about to reach Allyson, I felt that I was getting overwhelmed again by the runts. I took the thunder spear by the lower end and swung around in a circle two times. I don't know how many I cut through but I knew it had to be around 30, suddenly I didn't feel overwhelmed any more. The thunder spear was also good for dealing with Titans; which was good, considering the fact that one just happened to be charging at me from my left side.

I didn't even need to go into Speed Mode to handle this one. I charged at him, grabbing my thunder spear by the middle, and slid through his legs right before impact. The spear cut clean through his legs, turning him handicap. I quickly got up, careful not to cut myself with my own weapon, and cut clean through his torso. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, but that was quickly brought to a halt when I heard Allyson scream.

I looked over to see that she was backed up against the wall, being held in place by a dogpile of runts; but that wasn't the scary part. There was a Titan that had all of his lasers trained on her. I didn't know if the lasers would kill, but I was certain they wouldn't be a pleasant experience. Yet I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't blast him, or the dogpile; with that much metal in such close vicinity, I might accidentally fry Allyson. I could have went into Speed Mode and cut the Titan down, but he was already on the verge of blasting, I wouldn't be able to stop it from shooting even if I did cut it in half. I wished there was some way the blast wouldn't hit Allyson, for a brief moment I imagined a shield protecting her. When the Titan fired, everyone, especially me, was surprised when a medieval shield made of lightning, got in the way of the Titan's blast, causing him to be severely damaged, and tumble backwards. I didn't waste another second. I went into Speed Mode and charged at the remains of the Titan. At this point, I didn't doubt the capabilities of my powers. So far I could: blast lightning, reshape it, wield it, and make shields with it. Why not a sword? I swiftly closed the distance between the two of us and leaped into the air. While in midair, I raised my arms as if I was holding something, and imagined a huge wicked looking medieval sword being brought down to cleave the titan in two. As I came down that's exactly what happened a sword made of lightning formed in between my hands, and sliced the Titan right down the middle. I turned around to check on Allyson, and as it turns out she had everything under control. Before I even made an action to help, she shook off her aggressors with a huge explosive wave of sun energy, turning them all into scrap. I quickly ran to her, checking to make sure she was alright.

"You ok?" I asked her.

"Yeah i'm fine," she said. "But Grant won't be, he's wearing down, look."

I turned around to where Grant was still fighting his heart out. Allyson was right, Grant was strong, and he was doing surprisingly well for someone who was fighting alone, but he was slowing down, and he was getting surrounded. As if on cue, a Titan knocked him down and started to blast him with his laser cannons, three more joined in on the shooting; it was all I could do not to charge in myself.

"GRANT!" screamed Allyson.

"It's ok," I said frantically thinking up a plan. "We'll save him we just have to-"

"WATCH OUT!" Allyson screamed as she put up a force field, to guard us from three Titans who had already begun to fire at us.

The barrier held, but the force of the impact knocked me forward a few feet. But in those few seconds, I had already formulated a plan to get us out of this tight spot, save Grant, and trash the rest of these robots.

"So what's the plan?" Allyson asked me.

"What?" I responded.

"You look like you have a plan, and right now i'm all ears, so what is it?"

"Make another explosive wave, a bigger one, it'll damage the Titans enough to get them off of our backs, after that, leave them to me, and start blasting the runts and Titans in Grant's direction, i'll fill you both in on the rest of the plan once were inside another barrier; are you ready?"

In response, Allyson made the biggest explosive wave i'd ever seen, knocking away the Titans (amazing how fast she caught on to my lingo), and destroying many surrounding runts. Then she took to the air, and started blasting sun energy at the surrounding robots that were pounding Grant. Her sun blasts were even exploding on impact to do more damage; how good was she?!

As for me, I went into Speed Mode, quickly cut down the remains of the Titans, and then threw my sword in the air, willed it to grow 10 feet long, and then supercharged it. After that was done I willed, the sword to fly diagonally right, where a lot of robots where. The blade cut through all of them as if they weren't there, the destruction toll had to be at least 50, not counting the ones who were destroyed during the aftermath of the explosions. With a lot of our surrounding enemies in shambles, I helped Allyson, who was still blasting away, frantically trying to save Grant. It took about a minute, but our combined efforts in blasting down the robots proved successful when we finally got in range of the Titans who were still blasting away at Grant; God I hoped he was ok. Once in range, I went into Speed Mode again, and cut down the four Titans with a Thunder Sword (lightning sword construct) in less than 1 second. After that, Allyson quickly put up a sun barrier, and I checked to see if Grant was ok. To be honest, you'd expect he'd have a lot of bumps and bruises, probably burnt skin and bleeding gashes. Yet, except for the fact that his jersey and jeans were badly shredded (thank god his undies were mostly undamaged), he was fine; didn't have a scratch on him, although he was barely conscious.

"He's fine," I said to Allyson. "But he's in no condition to fight.

"I can take care of that," said Allyson

"By singing? I thought people couldn't handle more than one."

"Grant has a much higher tolerance level, he'll be fine."

"Ok then, do your thing, do you need me to take over barrier duty until you're done?

"Nah, I'm good at multitasking, just be ready to fill us in on the rest of that plan when he comes to.

Allyson began to sing (so people DO glow when she heals them, cool), and after about 10 seconds Grant was back on his feet.

"You alright man?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said, looking extremely humiliated. "Yeah i'm good, thanks for saving me you two, I was in serious trouble there."

"WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT THAT, NEXT TIME YOU WANNA GO ALL GUNG HO, AND LEAP TO YOUR DEATH YOU STUPID BOY!" Allyson screamed at the top her lungs which was pretty terrifying considering the fact that she was still glowing like a sun goddess.

Then she did the unthinkable, and gave Grant a big hug (apparently her sun form doesn't burn other people, good to know).

"Almost scared me to death," she barely whispered. "Never do that again, promise me."

"I won't," said Grant. "I promise."

I cleared my throat, loudly.

"Uhh guys, not to be a third wheel here, but were still in the middle of a war zone, so how about a little less cuddling and a little more killing please?"

Grant and Allyson both turned bright red and quickly let go of each other.

"Alright here's what we're gonna do," I started. "Allyson, make another explosive wave, as big as you can possibly make without blowing the Helicarrier to bits, i'll release another wave following yours', that'll destroy a lot of the remaining resistance. After that, you take to the air and blast anything on the far reaches of the room in all directions. Grant, you stay on the inside, smash anything within reach and try not to get get blasted again. As for me, I'll be using my super speed to take out robots in mid section between both of you're zones, If the enemies start to pile up, i'll rush in to help wherever i'm needed. Is everyone good with that plan?

"Yup," said Allyson.

"Let's do it," said Grant.

"Alrighty then," I said. "Allyson, whenever you're ready."

Allyson yelled at the top of her lungs, and thrusted her hands out. Immediately, an explosive wave was unleashed on a bunch of poor robots. I quickly crossed my hands over my chest like a mummy, yelled at the top of my lungs, and unleashed my own explosive wave (no, that was not necessary, but it looked a lot cooler on the recording), taking out even more robots. In total there were only about 200 of them left (yeah I know, "_What do you mean ONLY 200"). _It was time to go to work. I took off into a zone in the middle of Grant and Allyson's designated sections, created a Thunder Sword, and began to run around, killing as many robots as I could. Now, although I was going really fast, I wasn't going as fast as I could. What I mean by that is, I had very little Speed Mode Momentum left so although I was outstripping my opponents easily, everything was only slightly slower around me, so I still had to be careful. While I was busy hacking down enemies, I caught a few glimpses of Grant and Allyson doing their share of the plan. Allyson was blasting away at the outer areas, keeping a lot of robots out of my zone. Every time I saw a group of robots meet their fiery end, I knew Allyson was looking out for me. Grant was fighting like a madman on the inside zone, Call me crazy but I don't think he liked being blasted with lasers. He fought with such anger and intensity I wasn't ashamed to admit I was a little afraid of him at the time. For example, he quickly smashed down 10 runts with his bare hands and then, when a Titan crossed his path, he tackled it, launched it into the air, and grabbed it by it's feet. Then he smashed the Titan to the ground so hard, most of it shattered on impact. Grant then used the remains of the Titan as a club to smash on other robots. Also, I realized that I was getting too slow with my strikes. I had to run in and help out Grant a few times, because robots in my section were overflowing into his. After that, I switched from the Thunder Sword and created Thunder Claws (yes, like Wolverine's but way longer) to improve my striking speed, it really made the difference when it came to border patrol. With our combined efforts, we managed to sweep up the rest of the robots in under three minutes. Unfortunately, our battle was not yet done.

The roof of the room opened up and out dropped three giant, as in 20 feet tall, robots with huge laser cannons and wicked sharp hand talons. These had to be at least 10x the strength and power of the Titans, and i'll just call them Giants; it's self explanatory.

To start the fight off, the three Giants trained their lasers on the three of us and fired. Allyson and I put up barriers to keep the lasers from hitting the three of us, but even with our combined might, we wouldn't be able to hold the barrier for long. I had to think up a plan, fast.

"Allyson," I said in a strained voice.

"Yeah?" she asked me in a voice just above a whisper.

"On the count of three, we release another wave together, that should take out their cannons. Grant afterwards you take out the one on the far left; crash it, smash it, thrash it, do whatever you have to just take it out.

"Gotcha," he said in an almost annoying burden free voice.

"Allyson, same to you, make a giant sword out of your sun energy, slash at the robot's legs and arms on the far right, then smash it to bits with a big hammer."

"Alright, but what are you gonna do?" she asked me.

The truth was that I didn't know, I was running on empty and I had no idea how to fight a giant without my Final Flash move.

"Don't worry, I have a plan." I lied. " 3,2,1, NOW!

Allyson and I blasted together (wow, that so did not come out rig- crap did it again-oh never mind you get it) in an intense blast wave of sun and thunder. The good news was that the blastwave did indeed take out the Giants' laser cannons and even damaged their armor a little. Grant did as instructed, and went punching away at the giant on the left, flying straight into his chest over and over again, bashing it's head with his crazy strength and just giving it a bad time. Allyson was doing much better. She created the giant Sun Sword, cut the Giant down to size (that's funny), and began to relentlessly smash it with her hammer. Me on the other hand, I was on all fours, trying to catch my breath.

The truth was, my Speed Mode Momentum was spent, plus making all of those lightning constructs took a lot energy to make; especially the bigger ones. I was at my end, but I couldn't let that stop me. I had a small amount of energy left, I had to put it to good use. I focused on a lightning strike, directly above me. It took a few seconds but finally I heard a loud CRAKK! BOOM! followed by the sensation of a bolt of lightning striking me in the back, and restoring my energy. The good news was that now I had the energy to fight back. The bad news was that somehow my robot, the one on the middle, still had working laser cannons, oh and did I forget to mention that my speed was still out of commission?

Naturally, the Giant started the fight by blasting his three laser cannons (one on the right hand, two on the shoulders) at me. I immediately created a Thunder Shield, but even I couldn't block that much laser power. The shield surprisingly held, but it was pushed back by the force of the laser cannons, and rammed into me. The momentum pushed me back into the wall; now I HAD to keep the shield up, or i'd be vaporized. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see that Allyson was just wrapping up her fight, or should I say smash fest, but before she could rush in to help me, another giant appeared in a flash of light, forcing her to go back to work. Grant was still working on his Giant and although he was making considerable progress tearing through it's chest and ripping out anything that looked important, he wouldn't be finished quick enough to help me out.

The Giant had me pinned down for about 20 seconds before I made a move to escape. I knew I was tiring fast, every second I held up my shield, my energy was draining, the question wasn't whether or not my shield would hold. The question was how long could I keep it up, because one way or another, if I stayed in this position, I WOULD get blasted. I concentrated on pushing the shield against the laser pressure, using my feet to push the shield even further. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give me a small opening to jump towards my right, and avoid the laser blast. Although I did escape the initial impact, the force from the explosion threw me forward, and I smacked into another wall, only this time, I was cornered. I scanned my energy levels, and felt that I did have a decent amount of power left but I needed speed, it wouldn't be long until the giant shot at me again. "_Ok body," _I thought to myself. "_I need some Speed Mode Momentum, I don't care how you give it to me, but I need it now."_

Amazingly enough, my body responded. Lightning started to flicker around me and I felt the insides of my body shake and vibrate. I felt the power build up in me, first slow, but then it rushed to me all at once in a surge of voltage that concealed my whole body. The power surge felt so good, I think I screamed in elation. After the surge died down, the Giant shot at me, or at least I heard the cannons go off. In actuality, the lasers had only traveled a few feet from the cannons and were moving super slow. I took this time to create another giant Thunder Sword, and ran toward the giant. Instead of slashing at his legs, First, I literally ran up the length of his right leg, his torso (how fast was I going?), and cut off his right arm. Then, while I was on the arm that was falling, I ran across the giant's shoulders, cut off his other arm, ran back down his body, and slashed both of his kneecaps. I then came down from Speed Mode, to watch the giant collapse; and before he could fall over, I threw my blade in the air, and willed it to impale itself in the giant's forehead. Then I yelled at Grant to get out of his giant and, when he was safely away, I created a giant electrical boomerang, big enough to cut though a statue, and used it to cut the giant across the middle, and across the neck when it came back. I then willed the boomerang to fly back to me and I re-absorbed the energy. Meanwhile, Allyson was just finishing up her second robot. I don't know how she did it, but she was using a giant sword and shield made of sunlight, so I pieced together a rough image of her blocking lasers, and cutting off robotic appendages.

Of course the fight wasn't done yet, two more giants flashed into the room, one for me, and one for Grant.

"Grant!" I called. "Heads up!"

I created a giant Thunder Sword and willed it to fly over to him. Now before you ask me a million questions, I willed the Thunder Sword not to shock him, or at least that's what I wanted it to do. Grant was hesitant at first, but after seeing that he had no other choice, he grabbed the blade, and flew towards the Giant. The fight was so unbelievably quick, it was over before I even attacked my robot. Grant flew towards his giant, dodging the laser cannons and sliced the giant in half with the sword and then for good measure decapitated it, and sliced his head, and body right down the middle. The poor thing didn't have a chance; I almost felt sorry for it.

I willed the thunder sword to fly back to me and I absorbed the energy, much to Grant's disappointment, I think he was quite fond of it.

"What about yours?" he asked me.

"I've got it, nobody interfere with my battle."

My giant prepared to shoot at me, but this time I was ready. I had never tried this before, but then again, I had never had lightning powers before. I imaged the three giant electric hands, blocking the Giant's three cannons. Surprisingly, it worked. Right before the cannons went off. Three giant Thunder Hands blocked the cannons, causing the blasts to backfire, and severely damage the robot. After that, I went into Speed Mode Supreme. For those of you that don't understand, Speed Mode Supreme is just me using a lot more of my Speed Force Momentum at once, so that I can go a lot faster and be less affected by gravity so that I can run across vertical surfaces, like a giant robot's body for example.

Anyway, I ran across the giant's body and placed four big balls of electrical energy on it's kneecaps and elbow joints. Then, once I was safely away, I detonated them, causing severe damage to the robot. I willed the excess energy to surge intensely across the robot causing even further damage to it's inside circuity and stuff making it shut down. Finally, I created a giant Thunder Arrow, and and willed it to fly straight through the robot's head, and then back to me so that I could take back the energy. The fight was finally over, and Grant, Allyson, and I took a small break, while Fury evaluated our performances.

"Grant," he started. "You're very strong, and very brave, but you're also very stupid. You don't just rush into battle without a plan of attack, even if you can take on a dozen robots single handedly. I'd give you a D-, but considering the fact that you did hold your own for a good while, plus the fact that you did shape up your act after you're little ordeal, i'll give you a B."

"Thank you sir," said Grant. "I won't be doing that again; I uhhh…..made a promise."

Fury nodded and addressed Allyson.

"Ms. Grace. During this battle you were very level headed, you proved that you can stand on your own as well as participate in a team. You did indeed hold your own until you're unfortunate incident, lucky that Jason was there to save you. But other than that, you have proven yourself to be a capable fighter, and a reliable asset to your team. You get an A."

Allyson blushed like crazy.

"Thank you Colonel Fury," she said. "I did my best."

Finally, Fury addressed me.

"Mr. Fuller. You were very good all around. You made very good use of your powers, especially considering the fact you just came into them. You displayed ingenuity, creativity, resourcefulness, improvisation, and leadership qualities that are necessary for successful teams. Also, you have proven yourself to be a very capable fighter, both as an individual ,and as a member of the team that you led to victory. You get an A+."

My eyes lit up, and I couldn't help but smile. It was just like gym class, I had blew the competition away, and wowed the coach.

"Thank you sir, couldn't have done it without my friends."

Friends. That word sounded weird to say out, loud especially with the word 'my' in front of it. Still, it felt good, like I finally belonged somewhere.

"Yeah, Yeah," said Fury. "Don't get sappy on me, ya'll still got training too, so let's hop to it."

The rest of the day went by in a flurry of training activities. I knew for a fact that Grant and Allyson sparred against each other a few times (Grant won, but Allyson put up a good fight; as it turns out, he's strong enough to smash through solar constructs), as well as worked together in a bunch of air simulations. As for me, they put me on some kind of weird mega treadmill, and made me run real fast while they tracked my speed. While doing this, I learned that I could use my lightning powers to refuel my Speed Mode Momentum by making it double back through my body. It took a little bit of concentration at first but after 30 minutes of straight running I got the hang of it. Then they told me to run with my lightning trail. At first I was like WHAT? but they showed me a recording of me running up the body length of the Giants. As it turns out, when in Speed Mode Supreme, I was an electric blur, it looked awesome. I tapped into Speed Mode Supreme and took off. I didn't pay too much attention to how fast I was going, but I did once see that on the meter I was going at 2000 mph (and yes, I did feel the sonic boom after I broke the sonic barrier 1,239 mph ago). Fury also had me fight against specialized androids. For example, I fought an android that had super speed, for 2 hours straight. At first, the fight was really even, then the android started to kick my butt. Finally, late in the training session I learned how to effectively use hip tossing, and shifting momentum to use another speedster's momentum against them. Also, Fury had me fight against androids that could blast, fire and multi colored lasers at me. The fight was four on one, and although the androids did put up a bit of a fight, (they REALLY put up a fight) my lightning constructs helped me win the battle. Finally, Fury had me fight against Grant and Allyson. When I fought against Allyson, it was a battle of lightning weapons vs sun weapons. We blasted each other back and forth with thunder and sun and occasionally, we used constructs like swords, shields, even missiles at one point (it was a really competitive fight). Ultimately, I won when I knocked Allyson out of the sky with a lightning strike, and used my super speed and lightning constructs to chain her in lightning handcuff,s and trap her in a lightning barrier (I didn't have the heart to actually hit her).

Grant on the other hand was different. When I tried fighting him with my Voltage Fists (melee), he eventually overpowered me, and I had to resort to using lightning constructs. But remember when I said he was strong enough to break through constructs? Yeah, well the thing was…..he broke my constructs, or at least most of them. I tried to hit him with a Thunder Sledgehammer, he caught it and swung me around. I created Thunder Fists, like the ones I used with the giants, to beat on him from a distance. That worked for a good 20 seconds before he took to the air, and quickly outstripped my constructs. Also, my lightning blasts didn't have too much of an effect on him. While he was flying, I hit him twice with lightning strikes and he only faltered, but he didn't fall, forcing me to go into Speed Mode, create a supercharged thunderbolt, and hurl it at Grant. This time Grant went soaring backwards into a wall, but he quickly got up and with a yell, came flying toward me, with the speed of a missile. I created a shield construct, but Grant flew through it like it wasn't there. Before impact, I went into Speed Mode, created Voltage Fists, and began to beat up on Grant. It's impossible to say how long I was punching Grant, 5 seconds? Maybe 10 or 20? However, at one point Grant did the unthinkable. He stopped my fist from hitting his face, and kicked me backwards. I charged at him again, determined to continue my assault, and he charged me back. The crazy thing was, he wasn't moving slow at all. We were going the same speed. Grant had super speed!

We battled in Speed Mode for a long time. Punching, running up walls, you know super speed stuff. Though I was initially better than Grant at Speed Mode combat, his strength was the deciding factor. The whole fight, I was out witting Grant, striking him in multiple places, changing, directions, a few times I actually managed to trip him up and resume my furious Voltage Fist beat down for a short time, before he managed to get me off of him. Finally, Grant (gotta get the word out of my mouth) B..B….BEAT me, when I tried to hip toss him, but couldn't, due to his weight difference. Grant got a hold of me, flew me in the air, and punched me so hard I flew into a wall. Before I could fall to the ground, Grant pinned me to the wall, punched me a good few times in the face and stomach, and then threw me across the room where I hit another wall and fell to the ground. Luckily, I wasn't too hurt and Grant helped me up.

"Good fight man," Grant said, a smile of sportsmanship on his face. "You're a really tough opponent."

"Thanks man," I said shaking his hand. "Good thing were on the same side, huh?"

"Good for you, bro!"

We both laughed hysterically, and left the training room. Afterwards, we rejoined Allyson, who was also coming from a training exercise.

"Who won?" she asked us.

"Grant," I said.

She gave Grant another hug and congratulated him. Then she also hugged me, telling me that as long as I tried my best, I was a winner too (spoken like a true 2nd placer). Afterwards, Fury announced over the intercom that we were done with training for the day, and that we could go and get some dinner (it was 5:00 pm at the time, and we had trained through lunch). Also, he told us that tomorrow we would have our "final exam", and that we should rest up for it.


	6. Chapter 6: The Final Exam

**Chapter 6:The Final Exam**

Grant, Allyson, and I made our way to the cafeteria, where we pigged out on burgers, fries, ribs, pizza, the whole nine yards. I can honestly say that I have never been so hungry in all my life, I blew through five plates filled to the brink with food and still had more room. (Before you judge me, I did run faster than the speed of sound, so I burned a lot of calories) I could tell that Grant and Allyson wanted to talk about everything that happened today, and so did I, but right now it didn't matter. Nobody talked, nobody asked any questions. Right now, food was all that mattered; and we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.

"So what do you guys wanna do now?" Grant asked, once we were done feasting.

Allyson and I shrugged. Like I said, eating was the only priority at the moment. We didn't exactly plan on what to do later.

"Ok," said Grant. "Well do you guys wanna come over to my room? I have a huge flat screen and we can watch TV together, talk about stuff, and just hang out."

"I'm cool with that," said Allyson. "How about you Jason?"

"I'm in," I said. "What room do stay in bro?"

"Room 337B, it's not too far from here, all we have to do is take the elevator, and walk around a corner, let's go.

We all got up, put away or many trays, and went towards the elevator. Once inside, Grant pressed the 3rd floor button, and we shot upwards. After getting out, we all took a right turn around a corner, and walked five doors down until we got to room 337B. Grant took out his key card, put it in the slot, and opened the door, letting us in. Grant's room wasn't too different from mine. We had the exact same bed, drawers, closets, even the same TV. The only difference was that Grant's room had a sofa, a recliner chair, and a beanbag seat. I guess Fury knew he would be the one that would have guests over; probably why my room didn't have any furniture. Anyway, Grant got a green shirt and some white shorts out of his drawers (he was still wearing his tattered clothes at the time), and went into his bathroom to change.

"Nice room huh?" I asked Allyson

"Yeah," she said. "Mine's doesn't have that cool bean bag chair, by the way, dibs."

She quickly plopped on the bean bag chair (I wanted to sit on the beanbag chair), and made herself at home. Because my only other option was to sit on a sofa meant for two, and because I really didn't feel that close to Grant yet, I grabbed the remote, flipped on the TV, and claimed the recliner chair.

"What do you wanna watch, Allyson?" I asked her.

"Hmmm," she thought for a moment. "Teennick, see what's on Teennick."

"Sure bolts,"

"HAHAHA!" she laughed. "Good one Jason."

At first, I thought I'd have to turn to the TV Guide or something to find the channels, but as it turned out, S.H.I.E.L.D. had Direct TV. I had that back at home, so I already knew where Teennick was. I turned there, checked the time listings and saw nothing but Drake &amp; Josh for the next 4 hours.

"Hey Allyson," I said. "There's a Drake &amp; Josh marathon starting next, wanna watch?"

"Totally," she said in a voice that said "_Did you even need to ask?". _"Who doesn't love Drake &amp; Josh?"

"Losers," said Grant, who was just getting through with changing. I noticed that he trashed his ruined pants, but held on to the remains of his jersey; poor guy, must have been hard for him to get kicked off the team like that. I pretended like I didn't see the jersey.

"You know what?" he asked. "I wanted the beanbag chair, Allyson."

"Get in line dude," I told him.

"See, I would move," said Allyson. "But this chair is super comfy, sooo…."

We all laughed until I heard the Drake &amp; Josh theme song play.

"Hey guys it's on," I said. "Sit down and enjoy, Grant."

"But the beanbag chair." he said in a fake whiny voice.

"Dude, it's your room, she has to leave at some point."

"Or do I?" Allyson asked in a playfully seductive tone.

"OOOHHHHHH!" Grant and I screamed.

I gave Grant a fist bump as we both laughed hysterically at Allyson. Ignoring my minor feelings of jealousy.

"But then again," said Allyson. "I hear Jason does have a bigger bed than you, Grant. Maybe i'll spend the night there."

Grant screamed again; I probably would have too, but I was too busy blushing my head off. After we laughed the dirty jokes out of our system, we settled down, Grant took a seat on his sofa, and we started to watch the Drake &amp; Josh marathon. Even though I had seen all of these episodes like a million times, when I was watching them with Grant and Allyson everything seemed newer for some reason. Little funny things I was already used to, suddenly became hilarious. Episodes that were so old, I could recite everything word for word, suddenly had that new appeal, as if today was the first day I watched them. For like 3 three hours, everyone just watched TV, laughed it up, and just enjoyed each others company. We probably could have stayed that way all night, but out of nowhere Grant asked:

"Hey guys, if we're a team, then who's the leader?"

"Jason of course." said Allyson, before I could say anything.

"What?" I asked her.

"Oh don't look at me like that, it's obvious. You were so good at giving orders when we were fighting that robot army. You're fair, balanced, and cool under fire; if we are a team you are so our leader."

I looked at Grant, hoping for some kind of a disagreement in his eyes. I didn't wanna lead some ragtag team of mutants, I just wanted to go home. Unfortunately, Grant shrugged and smiled. He was at an unspoken agreement with Allyson; whether I liked it or not, I was the new leader now (I really hate democracy).

"Ok then," said Grant. "So what's our team name gonna be?"

"Dude, why does that matter?" I asked him.

"Because every awesome superhero team needs a name bro. That way, people remember us when we save the world and stuff."

"First off all, we are not superheroes, we're mutants, the rest of the world hates and fears us."

"Hey come on man, we may be mutants but we're still gonna do good with our powers, right? By default that makes us heroes, no matter what others say; so come on, let's think of a cool name."

What was with this guy? Did his parents teach him how to be this optimistic, or was he born like this?

"Oh, I know," said Allyson. "How about Delta Force"

"Nah way too military type," said Grant. "Good name, but too military type."

"Ok then, how about the Teen Avengers?"

"Too similar to the Young Avengers, besides we wanna be original, not another branch of a franchise."

"Ok, then you think of a name."

"How about Team Grant, just kidding. How about team Starbolt?"

"Catchy name," I said. "But since none of us, aside from Allyson, have star or space related powers, it wouldn't work out."

We went through names for like an hour, before eventually coming to terms that it wasn't working out, and that we'd put a pin in it. For now, we would go with Delta Force as a prototype name.

"Ok, now for individual names," said Grant.

"Oh God," I said.

"Come on, Jason," said Allyson. "Don't be a downer, this is fun."

She hit me with that cute smile she always does when she gets excited about stuff. I knew I couldn't disappoint her even if I wanted to, so I joined in on the name making fun.

"Ok me first," said Grant. "How about Super Dude?"

"You stole that from Kenan &amp; Kel," said Allyson. "Try again."

"Mega Man?"

"Too plain, anybody can think of that."

"Uhhh, Power Guy."

"Come on Grant, you're not even trying anymore, dig deep, you can do this."

Grant thought hard for a while (I think I saw smoke coming from his head LOL), before blurting out:

"SUPER-G!"

We all thought about this for a while.

"Why Super-G?" I asked.

"Because, it stands for Super Grant, but now without saying my name, I mean G can stand for anything, right?"

"That's true, but you should put a pin in that bro, Super-G is a cool name, good to start with, but you deserve better."

"Thanks man, alright now for your name; personally I think Thunder-Man, Thundersprint, or Lightning Guy is an awesome name."

"Uhhh, for right now i'll go with Thunder-Man, it's a good starting name, who knows, it may catch on."

"Alright, Thunder Man lives, Allyson it's your turn."

Grant and Allyson went through a bunch of names. Some of the names that came up were: Sun Girl, Sun Princess, Solar Woman, even Sun Power for some reason.

"Sunbird," I finally said.

Grant and Allyson stopped talking; either the name was really good, or really bad, but it got their attention.

"Sunbird?" Allyson asked me, she seemed to like the name. "Why?"

"Well," I started. "Obviously, the word 'Sun' should be a part of your hero name; combine that with the fact that you can heal people by singing beautiful songs, plus the name sounds really mythological and cool, Sunbird is what I came up with."

Allyson thought about this for a little bit; my heart was fiercely hammering for some reason.

"I love it," she finally said. "In fact I'll keep it, permanently."

"Awesome sauce!" said Grant. "Super-G, Thunder Man, and Sunbird of Team Delta Force are officially a go, hands in everybody!"

Grant thrust his palm in front of him and looked at me and Allyson in gleeful expectation. I couldn't help but laugh. I may have been chosen to lead the team, but Grant was the heart and soul of it. I put my hand in, so did Allyson.

"Ready guys?!" he asked us.

"Ready," I said.

"Heck yeah!" said Allyson.

"Alright then, on the count of three, we scream BREAK, 6,4,3…

We all screamed BREAK, and thrusted out hands into the air, laughing uncontrollably, and living in the moment. After we calmed down, we spent another hour talking about possibilities for our final exam. Like: what would Fury have us doing, how we could work together better as a team, and making plans for possible scenarios. We even messed around with our powers a bit, to see if our plans were possible; luckily we didn't blow anything up. After a while, I checked the time:11:30 P.M.

"Hey guys," I said. "We should probably get some sleep now; it's getting late, and we need all of our energy for the exam tomorrow."

"Spoken like a true leader," said Allyson. "Alright, i'm going now, Jason you can walk me to my room if you want."

"Sure bolts,"

Allyson snickered.

"Bye Grant," I said before leaving. "See ya tomorrow."

"Sure thing bro, see you two in the A.M."

"Sleep tight," said Allyson. "Don't let Nick Fury bite."

We all had one more good laugh, before Allyson and I left Grant's room. I then followed Allyson to the elevator where she pressed the number two button and we shot downwards. I followed Allyson to her room 259Y and watched her as she opened her door. I took a brief look inside her room which, was about the same as mine and Grant except for the fact that she had a reading desk with a few chairs, and a chandelier (why would she need that?).

"Thanks for walking me here, Jason," she said.

"No problem," I said. "But before I go, can I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure, come inside we can talk for as long as you want."

I hesitated, and my reaction must have been visible, because Allyson laughed, and playfully hit me on the arm.

"Not in THAT way you idiot, we'll just sit down and talk, nothing more, ok?

"Ok sure, I mean, that's what I was thinking the whole time anyway."

Once inside, I pulled two chairs in front of the TV area, and sat down next to Allyson.

"Before we start," she said. "I wanna say thanks for the awesome name, I hope you and Grant find yours' too."

"No problem," I said. "So, my first question is, did you mean all that stuff you said about me being a good leader?"

"Of course Jason, you're a natural, I may have just met you today, but I know you're a good and dependable friend, with you leading us, this team will go places; why do you doubt yourself?

"Well for starters, i've never really had friends; ever since my parents died when I was seven, i've never made an attempt to be social; but I really like you and Grant, and I just don't wanna mislead you or get you hurt."

I wasn't looking at Allyson when I said this, and was completely surprised when I saw tears streaming down her face. I made a move to get her a tissue or something, but she waved me off, saying that she was ok.

"God Jason," she started. "I didn't know, i'm so sorry."

"It's fine," I said trying for a smile. "My foster mom, Doris, has been so good to me ever since I was seven, I may miss my parents, but I always have Doris, my other mom."

"That's good, good for you Jason; so what was your other question?"

"What do you think of this whole hero thing, I mean us being a hero team. I know you and Grant would be awesome heroes, but do you think i'm cut out for it?"

"Well let me ask you this; if you saw some guy mugging a family at gunpoint what would you do?"

"I would use my speed to disarm the mugger, knock him out, and return everything he stole to the family."

"Why? You don't know that family, you owe them nothing, and this isn't any of your business."

"Because I have the power to help them, and as long as it is in my power to help those who need it, i'll do everything I can."

"Then that's your answer Jason. You may not want to be a superhero, but you are a hero at heart, so yes you are cut out for it, you just don't know it yet."

I thought on that for a moment. Maybe Allyson was right but it still doesn't change the fact that I was on the verge of becoming the very thing I hated. Heroes never help when you need them, they're always busy saving the world but they can't save the little guys.

"Hey," said Allyson shaking me out of my thought bubble. "You'll see Jason, you may not think so, but you are a hero, it's what you were meant to be."

"Thanks, Allyson," I said, getting up to leave. "Sorry for making you cry."

"It's ok, it's just…. I couldn't imagine life without my mom and dad, i'm so sorry you lost yours, and at such a young age, it's so not fair."

"Hey life isn't all bad, I met you and Grant after all,"

She smiled and reached out to hug me. It felt good to hug her, like I was wrapping my arms around the sun itself.

"Alright," I said after forcing myself to let go. "I'm gonna go to bed now, sleep tight Allyson."

"Don't let Nick Fury bite, Jason," she said as she took out her PJ's, and went into her bathroom to get ready for bed.

I made my way back to my room, took a quick shower, slipped into my own PJ's, and climbed into my bed. Before drifting off to sleep, I thought to myself: _Can I really be a superhero?_

My alarm woke me up the next day at 7 A.M., it also shot me a hologram message, saying that the exam would take place at 10 A.M. in room 150G, and that our trainers would be available in that room for extra training, until it was time for the exam. Because I had extra time, I took a quick shower, before putting on some black workout pants, an orange T-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it, and a black warm up jacket; then I left to get some breakfast.

I met Grant and Allyson, who were already sitting in our usual spot, eating their food. It seemed like we were all on one accord with the dress code, because Grant was dressed in black workout pants, and a black muscle shirt. Allyson was also dressed in workout pants and a muscle shirt, although her shirt was yellow instead of black. Together, we all looked pretty fearsome, more so, considering the fact that we were all super powerful mutant teenagers.

"What's up guys?" I said as I sat down to eat (btw, I was eating the same thing from yesterday, but today I added blueberry muffins).

"It's all good," said Grant. "Ready to kick this exam in the face?"

"Whoever they put us up against, they won't know what hit em."

"Sure they will," said Allyson. "Three high schoolers, that just happen to be superheroes in training."

We all chuckled at this, although I did notice that when I glanced at Allyson, she kind of avoided my gaze. I didn't blame her; I mean, we did get in pretty deep about some personal stuff last night, I just hoped I didn't make anything weird between us.

"So are you guys gonna do that extra training thing?" asked Grant.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm gonna do some sword fighting stuff with Nightcrawler to get warmed up; what about you two?"

"I'm gonna do some sparring with Luke and Ms. Marvel for a bit, and if you're free, I'd like to work some speed combat with you; don't worry, i'll dial back the punches, wouldn't wanna take out my teammate on the day we really need him."

"Whatever dude," I said as I shrugged my shoulders. "Allyson, what are you gonna do?"

"I'm just gonna work on some of those moves we worked on last night," she said. "If you two muscle heads wanna wear yourselves out, be my guest."

After breakfast, we all made our way to room 150G, where sure enough, the heroes were waiting for us, well almost all of them.

"Nightcrawler?" I asked as I approached him. "Where-

"She's still recovering, Jason, you did quite a number on her, but do not worry, she'll be fine and back on her feet by tomorrow."

Wow, in less than three days, I had put two people in hospital beds; my hero meter wasn't feeling very full and this moment.

"Hey, do not blame yourself mein friend," said Nightcrawler. "Everything will be ok; you came to practice swordplay, no?"

"Uhh yeah," I said. "I wanted to see about learning some new moves, and practicing new skills, can you help me?"

"Of course, grab a blade, we'll get started."

For an hour, Nightcrawler and I practiced the many different aspects of sword fighting. From different ways to parry strikes, dodging and countering attacks, he even taught me how to use backflips and sword throwing to defeat opponents. You'd think that it take me a long time to learn this kind of stuff, but I was a natural. Each lesson only took like five minutes tops. Maybe it was the fact that I had a secret passion for sword fighting, or maybe it was my super speed and reflexes helping me along, but the point was that I was a sword fighting machine, and there was no stopping me. Nightcrawler and I took small 2 minute breaks during subject changes; during these breaks, I was able to check on Grant and Allyson's individual practice courses. Grant and Luke were pretty much doing the same thing Nightcrawler and I were, except Grant was learning takedown moves, arm grabs, wrestling type moves, even how to do effective drop kicks. They sparred a few times, but now that Grant had speed and strength, the fight was pretty one-sided. Allyson, though at first promised not to do it, was in an intense power battle with Storm (probably because she didn't want Storm to feel left out, that's so Allyson). I realized that Storm was holding back on Allyson yesterday (then again, who wasn't), because today Storm was using everything she had. From lightning, to wind, even hail and blizzards at one point. During the 2 minute intervals that I tuned into the fight, Storm and Allyson were keeping each other at bay, while also trying to get a decisive hold on one another. At one point it, seemed as though Allyson was gonna lose, when Storm summoned a blizzard so powerful, it blanketed the entire room in frost, making me very sorry I didn't wear a jacket or a hoodie that day. I saw what Storm was trying to do, use the blizzard to extinguish Allyson's light (I assume Storm thought her light was based off of heat), and make her powerless. This planned worked for maybe a few seconds, as Allyson did flicker on and off a few times. However, just when it seemed that she was going to go out, she released a big wave of solar energy, knocking Storm off balance, and turning off the blizzard. Her wave was so powerful and as it turned out, so full of heat, that it evaporated the residual frost, and left me feeling like I had just walked out of a dryer. Allyson would eventually win the fight when she created a solar force field around Storm, which by the way, looked like a mini sun. When Storm tried to blast her way out, the energy rebounded throughout the force field, and fried her. Also, to add insult to injury, Allyson made the force field implode on itself and cause a massive explosion, taking Storm out of commission. Luckily for Storm, Allyson could heal just as fast as she could hurt, and after a few heavenly verses, Storm was up on her feet again, good as new.

At 9:30, Nightcrawler and I decided to stop the lessons, and get down to the sparring. The first match was pretty even, considering that I wasn't making as many rookie mistakes as I did the previous day. Nightcrawler pushed me way harder though, and I had to really focus so that I wouldn't fall for any of his fancy tricks. For example, at one point during all off the slashing, blocking, and countering, Nightcrawler made a motion to stab at me. Lucky for me, we already went over feinting moves, and I saw the trick coming from a mile away. I stepped back and when he brought the blade around for a horizontal slash, I parried the blade, while simultaneously kicking him in the head Shawn Michaels style. This put him off balance long enough for me to attack him with a flurry of stabs and slashes. Unfortunately, I underestimated Nightcrawler's recovery time, and while I was on the attack, he dodged one of my slashes, and when I tried for another stab, he locked my blade in the hilt of his sword, and quickly disarmed me, throwing my blade to the far left. The blade however was not far enough away from me, if I played my hand right, I could retrieve it. So when Nightcrawler slashed at me, I side flipped over his blade (LIKE A BOSS!) and upon landing, jumped to the left, grabbed my blade, and rolled away, knowing that blue boy would try a teleport take down. Our match went on for another five minutes, until I decided to try that backflip move Nightcrawler showed me. I put the pressure on slashing, stabbing, and feinting moves, until I found a golden opportunity where Nightcrawler was distracted enough for me to do a surprise backflip. Unfortunately, where his chin was supposed to be, I felt nothing but air. When I landed, I felt the impact of a dull sword pelting me in the chest.

"What happened Jason?" Nightcrawler asked me.

"I messed up, I thought you wouldn't be expecting the backflip move."

"I wasn't, but you made it obvious that you were going to do it."

"How?"

"You let your guard down, and you're body language depicted that you would try for that move. As a swordsman, your greatest ally, other than skill, is surprise, try to mask your moves more, so that your opponent does not read them like an open book."

"Alright, i'll work on it. Come on, I have 15 minutes until it's time for my exam; we can squeeze one more fight in."

The second fight was pretty much like the first, except that I was a lot better. I took Nightcrawler's advice and made an attempt to not look so predictable. For example, I noticed that I make a face when I do, or am about to do, certain moves. When I am about to parry a strike, I look at the blade; Nightcrawler always sees this, and changes the direction of his strikes, nearly cutting me. When, I tried for a feint move, I scrunch up my face in concentration, and it alerts Nightcrawler to my tricks. After I realized I was doing this, I made a conscious effort to change it. I focused on one face of concentration, and made a mental effort to hold this face no matter what. At first, it was a little difficult, but I found that the trick wasn't to focus on what I was doing, but why I was doing this. I was doing this because I wanted to be a better swordsman, because if nothing else, I wanted to beat Nightcrawler at least one time. My face change worked. Even though I still wasn't able to hit him, because of my constant face of concentration, Nightcrawler was predicting my next attacks way less than he did before. This allowed me to take the offensive more often, and put the pressure on him. I slashed at him horizontally with my sword, and when he parried my strike, I quickly stepped in and kneed him in the gut. While he was tumbling backwards I quickly baseball slid, and swept his legs out from under him. Knowing Nightcrawler for the acrobatic genius he was, I knew full well that he would land on his feet. So, I tapped into my Speed Mode, just enough to make me go a little faster, and quickly pushed myself off of the floor, and into a power kick, landing perfectly on Nightcrawler's chest. Just as I had him pinned down, he teleported away, which I totally knew he would. I Immediately went into Speed Mode Supreme and moved away from the spot I was standing. Right where I would have been, I saw a cloud of blue smoke appear and the slow mo vision of Nightcrawler rematerializing out of it. I quickly got behind him, turned my Speed Mode off and slashed him across the back.

"Finally beat you," I said as I helped Nightcrawler get on his feet.

"Good job mein friend, he said smiling, (that still unnerves me). "You are getting much better, but you still have much to learn."

"Good thing I have such a good teacher then."

Nightcrawler chuckled.

"I guess so," he said. "By the way, you only have five minutes left before your exam, good luck, hopefully you'll pass, and we can still cross swords in the future."

I didn't like the way he said "hopefully," but I thanked him for the support, and went to find Grant, so that we could use the remaining time to practice speed combat. To be honest, I couldn't tell you who was winning the fight. Everything was way too fast, plus Grant and I got some pretty good hits in each other. Although I will admit, one time he did score a major blow by grabbing my arm, twisting it behind my back. Then, after getting a lock on me, he abruptly stopped while twisting, and threw me across the room. Only my reflexes kept me from ramming back first into the wall. After that, we both decided to call it a draw, and rest up for the main event.

We took a seat next to Allyson, who was also resting up by sitting on a bench.

"Hey guys," she said. "Ready for the exam?"

I noticed she was breathing rather heavily, and so was Grant.

"Are you two nervous?" I asked them.

They both flustered around trying to answer my question, laughing nervously, and mumbling their words. Oh yeah, they were nervous. If they were to go into battle this way, we'd never stand a chance; so as the leader, I decided to give my teammates some words of encouragement.

"Guys, you're acting like whips," I started. "Come on, we're more than ready for this, what's wrong with you two?"

"Nothing man," said Grant. "Just nerves before the big game, happens to everyone."

"I'm just afraid of failing," said Allyson. "I've never made anything lower than an A in all my life."

I fought back the urge to say "overachiever".

"It's ok you guys, we won't fail." I said. "We're Delta Force, remember?"

"That's only a temporary name," said Allyson.

"Not the point," I snapped. "The point is that together, we are an unstoppable team; as long as we stick together, nothing can beat us, so come on let's do this."

I thrust my hand out.

"Delta Force on three?" I asked.

Grant and Allyson slowly broke into grins and thrust their hands on top of mine.

"6,4,3, DELTA FORCE!" We all shouted.

I was better at this whole leader thing than I thought.

"Attention trainees," said the voice of Nick Fury over the intercom. "Your exam will begin in 20 seconds, prepare yourselves now."

Grant, Allyson, and I got up, stretched for a few seconds, did some jumping around to shake off the remaining nerves we had, and got into our various battle defensive stances. We all had a pretty good idea what was coming at us, and even if it wasn't what we thought it was, we were prepared for many more alternate scenarios. All that was left, was for the showdown to begin. The countdown reached 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1.

A big flash of light enveloped the entire room. Immediately, Allyson and I put up barriers, good thing too, because we were under some crazy laser fire. Through the glare of Allyson's barrier, and the electric surge of mine, I saw an army of robots. Runts and Titans blasting away at us like there was no tomorrow. I may have been exaggerating a bit, but by the looks of it, there had to be at least 2,000 robots on our tails. Before you ridicule me, or say that's impossible, just know that the room we were in, was really really big. Some rooms in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier are like that, bigger on the inside than you'd think judging on the outside entrance. Anyway, this was exactly the kind of scenario we were ready for.

"Allyson, you think you can hold you're barrier while I do my thing?" I asked her.

"Yeah no problem," she said. "Just make it quick, these are a lot of robots shooting at me after all."

I let my barrier drop, closed my eyes, and focused. So far, I could cause lightning strikes easily, but what I was going to do now, was going to be way over the top. I imaged a thunderstorm right over the robot army. I willed this thunderstorm to be big, to have lightning striking in all directions, but to hit only the robots. I felt the power build in me like a giant wave, getting ready to crash on the shore. I pulled my arms back in, and with a yell, thrust them back out (this time that actually was necessary). I don't exactly know what happened, because I kept my eyes closed for the whole time. However, I did hear thunder, really loud thunder booms. I heard lightning striking metal in all directions, the noise was actually quite deafening. I don't know how many robots I had destroyed already, but I knew it wasn't enough. I kept up the thunderstorm for as long as I could, about 20 seconds, before I dropped to my knees, completely exhausted. Before you criticize my plan, saying that it was stupid of me to blow my energy like that all at once, just know that I thought of that in advance. Before unleashing that thunderstorm, I imagined a small bit of power being reserved in me, like a little ball of electricity, locked in my chest. Upon hitting rock bottom in the energy department, I imagined that ball of lightning exploding in my chest, and spreading electricity throughout my body. I willed the electricity to double back through my body, giving me more energy. Finally, when I had enough energy, I powered up like a Super Saiyan, electricity surging like crazy around me, refueling me completely (I did this for two reasons. A: I wanted to see if I could, B: I couldn't risk a lightning strike inside of a a force field with my friends inside).

"Alright everyone," I said, feeling way stronger than I ever had in my life. "Right now, there's way too many robots for us to divide them in sections, so for now were just gonna focus on demolition. Grant i'm gonna give you a Thunder Blade, Allyson will give you a Sun Blade, together we're gonna use our speed to mow down as many robots as we can on the left side. Allyson, do that sun gravity thing you were working on last night, trash as many bots on the right side as you can. After we reduce the numbers down a bit, we'll divide into sections and finish the fight off; everyone ready?

"Yeah," said Allyson.

"I need those blades first." said Grant.

Allyson and I created the swords for him.

"Explosive waves on three? I asked Allyson.

"Why wait?" she responded.

We both thrusted our hands out releasing a huge wave of sun an electric energy, trashing maybe 100 robots, plus the 300 or so I had trashed with my thunderstorm. Afterwards, Grant and I dashed to the left side of the room and went to work.

Together with our speed and combined efforts, Grant and I completely decimated our enemies. I went into Speed Mode Supreme, created two thunderbolts, and went hacking away at any robot that I came in contact with. Because I was making my lightning double back through my body, I didn't have to worry about losing power or momentum, making it easier for me to enjoy slicing and dicing the robots. With my thunderbolts and my speed, I struck down maybe 10 or twenty robots per second, even Titans didn't stand a chance of surviving when I cut them in half at the waist. Grant was also doing his thing pretty well, slicing robots in half an even using his swords to create a clothesline, moving down robots like grass. We must have taken out like 500 robots together, talk about teamwork. By the way, I think it is worth mentioning that even with his super speed, Grant was still moving at slightly less than normal speed from my perspective in Speed Mode Supreme. Anyway, as we were mowing down robots together, I checked on Allyson's progress (I'll tell the events in normal speed time to avoid confusion). I couldn't tell you how she was doing physically speaking, because I couldn't exactly see her. However, I could see what she was doing, and boy was it scary. Remember when I told her to do that sun gravity thing? Well the thing about that was, last night, we figured if she has sun powers, she should be able to make her own personal miniature sun. The thing about a sun is, it has a huge gravitational pull, and if used as a weapon, especially when it came to defeating huge amounts of enemies, a huge ball of fire that can pull enemies in would come in handy. When we were hanging out in Grant's room, Allyson tried this out. She created a mini sun, about the size of a ping pong ball, and used it to attract and torch the hell out of some paper clips. By the way, were Allyson's power based on light or heat? I'd have to ask her later. Anyway, Allyson was doing the exact same thing, except this time, she created a sun that was about the size of the world that was on the shoulders of Atlas at the Rockefeller center, which by the way is pretty big. Because I couldn't see her anywhere, I assumed she was inside of her own sun, which was actually as good for defense as well as offense considering the fact that the lasers the robots shot at her didn't get past the barrier. Allyson's sun was so powerful, that I felt the room's temperature increase by at least 50 degrees. To make matters worse for the robots, Allyson's sun literally pulled them off the ground and towards the flaming ball of death. Upon reaching contact with the mini sun, the robots were either, melted like popsicles, burned to a charred metal crisp, or crumpled like and soda can due to the intense gravity. The robo death toll had to be around another 500 on Allyson's part.

After the range of the robots reached about 500 I ordered the team to execute plan Sector. Plan Sector basically meant that we would do the thing we did yesterday, when Allyson took the outside robots, I took the mid range ones, and Grant took the inside ones. The battle wasn't even close. The three of us finished off the remaining robots in less than 5 minutes, a new personal best; however, even I knew that this was too easy. We would have a lot more incoming challenges before our exam was over.

Because I have an annoying habit of being right whenever I shouldn't, another huge wave of light flashed, and more enemies appeared. Now don't get me wrong, I was ready for Giants to come sooner or later, but I didn't expect them to throw ten giants at us all at once. Lucky for me and Grant, Allyson wasn't as frozen up as we were. Before any of the Giants could take a shot, one of them on the left started to break down, or should I say in. It was like he was being swallowed and digested by his own stomach (if robots can have stomachs). When it finally digested itself, I didn't expect to see a sun in it's chest; furthermore, I didn't expect that sun to fly through another Giant, and repeat the same process.

"GUYS!" Allyson screamed at us. "DO SOMETHING!"

That shook me and Grant out of our fear freeze. Grant was still holding his blades, I made one for myself, and gave him a look. He nodded, and at the same time, we broke into a run. No matter how many Giants there were, I was so glad that they all stayed completely still when I went into Speed Mode Supreme so that I could hack them to pieces. For maybe 10 seconds total, I ran from giant to giant, hacking off limbs, cutting off heads, and you know, doing the whole being totally awesome thing. Oh, and Grant was doing good too; I saw him hacking away, and stuff like that. After Grant and I were done killing giants (I finished first), we were gonna help Allyson, who was probably being overwhelmed at the moment. Yeah….no she wasn't. Maybe it was because I was preoccupied cutting down Giants, or because I wasn't paying attention, but either way, while I was looking the other way, Allyson's mini sun wasn't so mini anymore. I was standing next to Grant, looking at a burning ball of fire 5x the size it used to be (if you need help visualizing, imagine a sun the size of a small mansion). Together, Grant and I took out six Giants, meaning four were left for Allyson. Her sun was so hot, the heat slapped my body, making me feel like I was in a dryer, but that wasn't the worst part. The gravity from her sun was so intense, that it was literally pulling the remaining four Giants limb from limb (why weren't me and Grant effected, not that i'm complaining.), they didn't even have a chance of fighting back. The robot pieces were obliterated into nothingness upon reaching impact with the sun, and when it was all said and done, Allyson willed it to shrink down to the size of an apple. Good thing too, because new Giants flashed in at that very moment. There were another ten Giants in total, or at least there were until Allyson did her thing. She threw her apple sized sun at the nearest Giant, and upon impact, the sun regrew to it's massive form. This time, instead of breaking off piece by piece, the robots were just sucked into Allyson's sun, and melted into metal soup. The one thing I wasn't ready for, was when the sun exploded in a giant wave of fire that was going to burn me to a crisp. The flames were moving slow, so at first I thought that I had activated my Speed Mode again, but that wasn't the case. The flames redirected their course, and flew towards Allyson who absorbed the energy easily. Her face was intense, angry even, which was ten times more scary when she was in her Sun Form. I could tell that no amount of robots would be able to stop her, not even Grant and I could take her when she was like this. Grant and I exchanged glances, looked at Allyson, and looked at each other again. We both got the message: Do not f*#^ with Allyson if you wanna live.

Allyson landed next to us, and turned off her Sun Form.

"Well that was fun," she said in her usual perky voice (somehow that scared me even more).

"What do you mean, was?" I asked her. "This isn't over yet."

"What makes you say that?"

"Look around you."

The room was changing, literally. A ripple traveled through the room, as if it were made of water, and when it had settled, the room was totally different. Grant, Allyson, and I were looking at a battlefield about the size of two football fields with a bunch of metal war barricades spanning across the flat landscape. At the end of the room were four metal towers positioned in the rough shape of a square. On those towers were huge, and I mean HUGE, cannons that probably shot lasers that could blast through titanium. As if this wasn't bad enough, in between those towers, on top of metal steps the size of houses, was a flag, a big neon green flag just waiting to be captured.

"Part two kiddies," said Fury. "You're job is to get that flag over yonder, without being blasted to bits by these awesome laser cannons I have installed just for you to play with; try not to break them too badly, I didn't get the extended warranty. Oh, and I forgot to mention, standing in your way will be and unending, and I do mean unending, army of robots with laser guns and stuff like that. Oh, and you all have to grab the flag at the same time or else you all fail, so no using that super speed to try and cheat your way into winning. Finally, you all have to get the flag without letting the robot army grab your flag, or you all fail. Any questions; didn't think so, begin simulation.

A huge flash of light enveloped the farther half of the room. When the light dissipated, the farther half of the room was swarmed in platoons of runts. There were easily more than a thousand runts on the field and more were coming by the second. I looked for the back of the army, but didn't see one, they would just keep coming until we were completely overwhelmed. Usually this is the part where i'm supposed to freak out and panic, or something like that, but oddly enough, I was super calm; at least I was, until the tower cannons started shooting at us. The first shot barely missed us, and we had to run like hell to get behind one of the barricades that was 50 meters ahead of us. Lucky for us, the barricade held up well against high pressure laser cannons, but the barricades wouldn't hold for long; this one would eventually break, plus the longer we waited to act, the closer the robot army were getting to overrunning us, and taking our flag. I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to sense anything dealing with my powers that could help us. What I felt was an army of robots, not their actual bodies, but their energy. Every last one of those things were powered by electricity, which meant that I could do whatever I wanted to them. I peered over the edge, and focused on a robot that was in the center of the oncoming wave. I imagined all of the power inside of it overloading to the point to where he would explode. It took a few seconds but the robot soon started to surge like crazy and in two seconds, exploded into scrap. Just like that, a plan popped into my head to pass this course.

"Guys!" I said to Grant and Allyson, who were screaming their heads off. "Calm down I have a plan!"

I quickly explained my plan to them for decimating the robot army, and buying us some time to get to the flag.

"Allyson, create a barrier to block out the lasers, it'll buy me some time to do my thing. After I do my thing. focus on creating that small sun explodey thing you did a while ago. If everything goes the way I think it will, we'll be finished with this in less than five minutes.

"Wait a minute," said Grant. "What do I do?"

"For now," I said. "Stay under the barrier, don't worry your time will come."

Grant didn't look too happy about that, but did as I instructed. Allyson created a wall of solar energy, blocking the laser blasts from doing more damage to our barricade, which was on the brink of being destroyed.

"Hurry up, Jason," said Allyson, her voice full of strain. "I don't know how long I can hold this up.

I closed my eyes, and focused on the vast amount of energy locked in the robot army. I imagined a wave of electricity spreading through the army, imagining it make them all to overload and combust into scrap metal. The power welling up in me was painful and kind of scary, but I held it for a few more moments, giving it time to increase. Finally, when I couldn't hold it in anymore, I thrust my hands outward with a yell, and hoped for the best.

The result was better than I could have ever imagined. The robot army started to overload and explode in mass numbers. It was like an invisible blade was sweeping through their ranks, taking them out by the hundreds as it swept through. Unfortunately, Allyson's sun wall broke under the pressure of the laser barrage. The force of the crash blew us off of our feet and threw us several feet backwards, enough to be in shooting range. Also, I was winded; not exhausted, but worn down enough to where I couldn't get up quick enough to dodge a laser cannon blast, Allyson was the the same way. In the distance I saw a laser cannon lock onto our position and fire. Before I had time to think: "_Oh crap, this is it," _I felt a strong hand grab me by the waist and in less than a second, I was safely behind another barricade 100 meters ahead of the crumbling one I previously was. The sudden change of speed was enough to shake me out of my daze. When I looked around, I saw Allyson lying next to me, breathing heavily; also Grant, who was also breathing heavily, but had a wild look in his eyes. Immediately, I knew what happened. Allyson and I were about to be blasted to dust, but Grant stepped in and saved us is the nick of time with his speed. I was so grateful to him, at that moment that I took back anything bad I ever said or thought about him (I know that's only one day's worth, but still).

"GUYS!" he shouted. "ARE YOU OK?!"

"First of all," I started, after my vision focused. "Stop yelling, I can hear you just fine, and yeah were good thanks to you bro."

"Yeah," said Allyson. "Thanks for the save, Super-G."

We all chuckled. Amazing how we could find the time to laugh and joke around in a time like this.

"Ok bro," said Grant. "What's the rest of your plan?"

"See for yourself," I told him.

I peered over the edge to survey the damage. That stunt I had just pulled had worked to perfection. The ground was littered with the remains the fallen. More robots were on the way, but it was way less intimidating to see a platoon of 300 rather than 2,000 or more. Anyway, I imagined two giant electric hands scooping up the scattered robot debris and compacting them into a giant ball. My powers responded beautifully; two giant hands made of electricity appeared, mimicked my hand movements, and compacted the robot remains into a giant metal ball, taking a lot of functional robots along for the ride as well. After I had my giant robot ball, I willed the electric hands to surge, spreading energy to the metal ball. Finally, I set my sights on one of the laser towers on the left side an mimicked throwing an object at it. My electric hands copied the movement and launched the metal ball at the tower. At the last moment, the tower tried to shoot the ball down but by then, the ball had already smashed into it. The force from the clogged laser cannons was enough to destroy the tower from the inside out. One down, three to go.

"Awesome job, Thunder Man," said Grant. "But what about the other three?"

"Allyson." I said.

"Oh right," she said. "I'm on it."

She put her hands together, and her face constricted in concentration. It took about 10 seconds but she finally produced a small sun, about the size of a fist.

"And you're sure that'll explode on contact?" I asked her.

"I never doubted that you could create a thunderstorm," she said. "Why do you doubt me of all people; i've had my powers longer than any of you."

"Ohhh," said Grant. "Buuuuurrrrrrrrrnnnnnn."

"Sorry Allyson," I said. "By the way speaking of burning, can Grant touch that thing without burning up?"

"As long as I don't want it to, then yes." said Allyson.

"Grant," I said. "Grab it, and throw it to that tower on the right."

"But what if I get burned?" he asked me.

"It won't burn you," said Allyson. "I don't want it to, don't worry you'll be fine."

Grant grabbed the mini sun (after inching his hand in slowly like a little wimp), and after making sure that the coast was clear, threw it at the right tower so fast, that if I didn't have super speed perception, it would have looked like a streak of light. Upon impact, the mini sun grew 5x it's size, taking out one of the right towers completely. To make matters even better, the gravity of the sun pulled the remaining two towers apart, which was so good because in case you didn't realize, the three of us were constantly under fire, and all the stuff we did was way harder to do than we let on.

With the four towers out of the way, all that was left was for us to get up giant metal steps and snag the flag (ugh, bad rhyme). I thought about it for a second. I couldn't fly. Grant could, but he'd be shot down within seconds if he tried to fly us all up there, we'd all need to be moving faster than the robots could see. I had a plan.

"Grant," I said. "Grab Allyson, we're gonna run to the steps with our super speed. Before we get there, grab me, and fly us all up to the top, we'll grab the flag together. Ready?"

The only one who seemed to have a problem with this plan, was Allyson. I shot Grant a look, and he nodded. He picked Allyson up bridal style, and we raced down the field together. I read somewhere online, that it would take a normal person about a full minute to run the length of two football fields. Life must totally suck for them. Grant and I cleared the distance in less than 1 second. Before reaching the steps, Grant grabbed me by the arm, and flew us all up the steps. If the robots knew that we had infiltrated their base, it was too late. Grant, Allyson, and I grabbed the pole of the flag (which turned out to be a hologram), and the room changed back to it's default setting. By the way, Allyson was so pissed that Grant grabbed her, and carried her off. She punched him in the chest a good few times, which probably would have hurt him, if it wasn't for the whole invulnerable thing he does.

"Last test," said Fury over the intercom. "For your final test, each of you will go one one one with an opponent I have picked for you. Your goal is to either beat them, or survive the fight for five minutes. Grant you're up first."

Allyson and I were instantly transported into and empty room, that had an overhead view of the room we were just in. If Grant was surprised by this, he didn't let on. He simply stretched his arms and got ready to meet his opponent. Light flashed in the room again, and some guy wearing a black X-Man suit appeared. At first I didn't recognize him, until his skin turned into steel and he grew an entire foot taller. It was Colossus; Grant had to fight Colossus!

(Grant's perspective)

What's up readers? Enjoying the story so far? Well get ready because it's about to get 10x better. So for the final part of my test, I had to fight Colossus of all people. I knew who Colossus was, everyone knew who Colossus was. Strongest of the X-Men, metal skin, etc., and now I had to fight him for five minutes, just so I could pass an exam; sure wish I studied up for this part. Ok, so I knew the guy was strong when he was in his metal form, but the thing is, so was I. Jason may not have told you this yet, but I can lift over 50 tons and can punch with enough force to get through titanium walls. In fact, whenever I fight, unless it's against robots, I only use 45% of my actual strength, otherwise I might accidentally kill someone. Lucky for me, Colossus was made of steel. He could probably take whatever I could dish out, and then some. I made a conscious effort to use 70% of my full strength for now. If he was able to take more, I would steadily increase in strength usage. Colossus and I stared each other down for 10 seconds, mostly because Captain Eyepatch was counting us down until the fight began. But more than that, we were sizing each other up. Colossus was big, strong, and smart, but when it all the numbers added up, all he really had was strength. I on the other hand had, strength, speed, plus I could fly. If this was a game of only strength, then maybe Colossus would have the upper hand, maybe. But it wasn't, I was a three in one wrecking machine, if Colossus was underestimating me in that clunky tin can skull of his, he was about to get the shock of his life.

"5,4,3,2,1,"

It was crunch time.

Starting out, I charged Colossus on foot. I did this because I knew that's what would expect me to do. That may sound stupid, but it made him lower his guard. He charged right at me, his shiny fists raised for a fight, just like I wanted him to. Right before we collided, I took off into the air and rammed him in the chest, flying him straight into the wall and beginning, to pound him with my fists. By the way, you don't know how my flight powers work do you? Well long story short, I just imagine myself flying, and that's what happens. At first it didn't work that way, or at least that's not how it worked back at my last football practice. But after a few hours of practice in my backyard, I got the hang of it. Anyway, i'm getting off subject, back to the epic superhero fight. I pounded on Colossus for like ten seconds, until he managed to catch on of my punches. He grabbed my other arm, pulled them apart and reared his head back. I already knew what was coming, so instead of trying to get away, I reared my head back too, and Colossus and I quite literally butted heads. The impact was enough to send me staggering backwards a few feet. You'd probably think that after headbutting a steel muscle man, i'd have some kind of a headache right? Well, thanks to my handy dandy invulnerability, I barely felt it. For the sake of knowledge I will enlighten you further. The way my super duper invulnerability works is, well, it just does. I still feel the impact if an opponent strikes me, but the impact is only 40% of what it would be in terms of personal damage. For example, when I was getting buried under laser pressure, it wasn't the blasts that hurt me, although they did sting a great deal. It was the pressure of the laser cannons combined with the heat, and time, that I spent under fire. Basically, unless Colossus got a hold of me, and started to pound me relentlessly, maybe it would start to hurt after a while; unfortunately for him; Colossus was never gonna get a chance like that. After our head butt battle, Colossus charged at me again, however, the guy was moving slower than a slug. Ever since I got super speed, the world kinda moves slower, which was good for me, but bad for the dude in front of me. By the way, I heard Jason calls it Speed Mode or something like that; don't tell him I said this, but that is super lame. Anyway, I rushed at Colossus at like 200 mph and gave him a running uppercut, knocking him a good,10 feet in the air. While he was airborne, I took flight, grabbed him by his feet, swung him around a few times and launched him across the room. Thanks to my super speed, he was still moving at the speed of a glacier, so I quickly flew across the room, and kicked him in another direction. Then, while he was still in motion, I flew under him and double uppercutted him with my crazy strength. I did this for a while, until I got tired of playing Colossus volleyball, and finally punched him super hard, sending him crashing to the floor, making a very satisfying boom.

For a good three minutes, Colossus and I went at it like beasts. I'll give it to the guy, he could throw some crazy punches, and he could take a beating. For example, one time Colossus countered one of my punches, and boy did I suffer for it. He twisted my arm around and brought his elbow on it, hard. Even with my invulnerability, that really hurt a lot. Colossus then capitalized by attacking me with a furious barrage of punches and kicks. The punches were so hard, they were as loud as cannon fire. Colossus wailed on me for a good while, but just as his hits were starting to hurt, I grabbed his arms, did a flying backflip kick, and while he was still staggering backwards, did a flying dropkick that sent him flying into a wall. Colossus and I would once again resume our back and forth power struggle for another minute or so. Now I could have played it smart, and lasted him out for another minute but the thing was, I wanted to win. With 40 seconds left in the fight, I made my winning move. When Colossus, punched at me with a right hook I dodged, grabbed the arm and twisted it. Then I kicked him in the chest with a powerful roundhouse kick, sending him tumbling backwards. Next, I used my super speed to pound Colossus in a furious barrage of punches. From the face, chest, back, whatever, I hit Colossus ten times per second in and unrelenting beatdown. Finally, I made conscious choice to use all of my strength, and finish him off in one more attack. I uppercutted him high into the air, flew up and kicked him across the room, flew around his back and kicked him back the way he came. Finally, in an epic display of awesomeness, I finished Colossus off with a furious aerial rush attack followed by a mega punch that sent him crashing to the floor; also, before he could even think about recovering, I landed on his chest, and hit him as hard as I could in his face with a powerful right fist. The hit was so powerful, that the walls shook and the looking glass rooms cracked. Colossus was lying spread eagled on the floor, unconscious, and breathing heavily; poor guy, he never stood a chance.

"Good job Mr. Jackson," said Nick Fury over the intercom. "Impressive effort, you can hit the showers now."

"Thanks sir," I said.

He pressed a button on his wrist and and spoke into it.

"Allyson you are up next."

Before I could say anything, I was teleported away in a flash of light, which felt super weird, and was suddenly in a room with a view of the room I was just in. The strangest thing was that Jason was already here waiting for me, and there was no sign of Allyson.

(Allyson's perspective)

Hiya readers, I'm Allyson Grace but I guess you already knew that huh? You can call me Allyson, or Ally, or Sunbird if you wanna, but uhh I guess now you wanna hear about the fight don't you? Ok here we go.

After Colonel Fury said that it was my turn, I was immediately whisked away from Jason and found myself back in the exam room. In front of me, another light flashed. When the light went out, this guy, who looked about 25 with brown hair, blue eyes, and a very confident smile, was several feet away from me. He was wearing an X-Man suit but for some reason, I couldn't place my finger on who he was.

"Hi there," I said to him, putting on my best smile. "How ya doin?"

"I'm chill," he said. "Yourself?"

"Pretty good, so do we start fighting now or what?"

"Eager beaver," he said with a chuckle. "Wait for the countdown, then we'll fight for as long as you can survive."

I scowled. It was always the same with everyone. No matter what I did, I was always little miss princess who needed to be watched and guarded over, like a precious jewel. When I got my powers my parents coddled me so much, I might as well have been three. Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents, and was so glad that they accepted, and helped me master my mutant powers, but was it too much to ask for a little space, freedom, or respect? Don't hate me for saying this, but I was kind of glad when S.H.I.E.L.D took me away for this hero thing. Finally, I could get some space, and have a chance to explore who I was without my parents constantly breathing down my neck. Now this guy was looking me the exact same way that everyone back at home does. He only saw me as a weak little girl who was way in over her head; I made a promise right then and there that I would beat him, no matter what it took.

Fury counted down: 5,4,3,2,1,..Begin

Time for the Sunbird to shine.

My starting out wasn't so great. I was going to hit the guy with an energy blast, but before I could, he winked, and suddenly I was frozen in ice. I realized at that moment that I was dealing with Iceman, one of the most well known X-Men in history. Iceman created a hammer made of ice but before he could swing it at me, I burst into my Sun Form, melted my ice prison, and his hammer construct. Because you are probably confused with my powers, I'm gonna answer the most basic question people ask me: Are my powers light related or heat related? The answer is yes on both accounts. I absorb light and heat from the sun, so I am able to use both aspects if I wish to. I usually don't use the heat related side, simply because it's really dangerous, and if it gets out of hand I could burn up an entire city; but right now I needed a little heat if I wanted to stand a chance of winning. Anyway, after escaping my icy bonds, I retaliated by creating mini sun balls to lob at Iceman. I set the balls to explode on contact, which would be effective in keeping Iceman off balance, plus keeping the temperature warm enough to weaken his power a bit. This helped me out for a good while. Any time Iceman tried to trap me in ice, his prisons melted into steam before they could even touch me. If Iceman tried to block my sun balls by creating a shield, or by freezing them, he was unpleasantly surprised when his defenses were evaporated, and he was blasted halfway across the room. However, after my brief moment of triumph, Iceman turned it up a notch, or two; seven is probably more accurate.

Iceman transformed into his full body ice state, and then things got really, really cold. The temperature in the room dropped at least 60 degrees, and Iceman began to assault me with an onslaught of hail, ice blasts, and even giants fists made of snow; what a copycat. Now the thing about my powers is, when it gets below freezing, the heat aspect begins to considerably weaken. It's still there, and I still have access to the light aspects of my powers, but light is mostly good for concussive force blasts. Right now I needed heat, and something told me Iceman wasn't going to let me have it without a fight. Thanks to the inner heat I had stored in me, my light constructs, and my will not to lose, I was just able to hold my own. Iceman pelted me with and endless shower of hail and snow, but I created a solar barrier that protected me from the brunt of the damage. While in my barrier, Iceman created lots of ice knives and shot them at me. It wasn't the fact that my barrier was failing, but I couldn't just stay like a turtle forever, so I took a different course of action. I transformed my barrier into a roman-like shield; big enough for me to be protected from the knives, yet at the same time, transparent, so I could see where I was going. Even with my clear view, the blizzard Iceman had created, made it really hard to see. To help even the odds, I tapped into a small bit of my energy reserves, and created a massive solar explosive wave. Because it so cold, the wave didn't survive for very long, or damage Iceman in any way. However, the wave was strong enough to melt enough of the blizzard, for me to see that Iceman was on my lower left still trying to pelt me with ice daggers. I flew straight into him using my shield to make a bigger impact. The force of the blow was enough to knock Iceman's concentration offbeat, long enough for me to once again take control of the fight. I focused on trapping Iceman in a solar barrier, kind of like the one I trapped Storm in when I sparred with her. The only difference this time, was that instead of just light, I trapped Iceman in a miniature sun. Yeah I know, that sounds brutal given the circumstances of his powers, but hey, I couldn't let him do that frozen tundra stuff anymore. Anyway, Iceman was trapped in there for a good 30 seconds, but it wasn't like he went out quietly. Because our fight had only just transferred from a blizzard, Iceman still had a lot of strength left in him; likewise, I was still bouncing back from the cold. Iceman fought against my prison, trying to freeze it from the inside out; it was all I could do to keep him in there. Normally, a situation like this wouldn't be a problem for me. I have tons of Sun Energy stored in my body, due to the fact that i've been absorbing it for almost a year. If this battle was happening outside, I could just make myself absorb more energy to make myself stronger or better yet use the energy to make my constructs stronger. Unfortunately, we were in a metal enforced room, that had no windows that were open to the outside; I was completely marooned, and had to rely on my inner strength.

I kept Iceman in the mini sun for as long as I could, hoping to weaken him enough that I could score a big hit when he got out. However, when he did get out, Iceman made it extremely clear that he was just getting warmed up, or chilled up in his case. After escaping, Iceman created a giant tornado made of ice and snow. The pull was way too strong for me to resist, and I was pulled in for the ride. On instinct, I locked myself in a solar barrier, which protected me from the ice shards, but did little to help when I thrown into a metal wall. Iceman didn't let up on me. He assaulted me with another barrage of hail, ice daggers, ice blasts, and basically anything ice related he could throw at me. I had no heat energy left, I was completely reliant on my light barrier to keep me from getting pelted into a snow cone, but it wasn't going to be enough. If Iceman got through, he would win, if time ran out, he would still win; but there was nothing I could do. I was completely helpless. By the looks of it, Iceman knew it too because suddenly he stopped attacking. Instead, he created an ice throne to sit on, the arrogant little jerk, and spread his arms, covering the floor in frost. From this frost rose an ice army, yes a frost army. They were vaguely humanoid shaped but had jagged ice spikes coming from their arms and backs. There had to be at least 100 of them, and more were rising; in that instant I knew what Iceman was planning, either I would be defeated hiding under this barrier or I would lose trying to fight back.

The chances of me winning were not so hot, but I knew I had to at least fight. If nothing else, I only had 2 minutes left in the fight; if I put everything I had into it, maybe I could survive and end the fight, with my dignity in one piece. I lowered the barrier and created a giant sledgehammer, luckily I could control my constructs by mind, so I didn't have to actually hold it. As the ice soldiers stepped up, I swatted 20 of them down with each swing. It went on like this for a 20 seconds however, just as I was starting to feel hopeful, My feet started to freeze, and the ice was still rising. I kept up my swings for as long as I could, but the soldiers were getting closer, soon I would be overpowered. I ditched the hammer and created a laser cannon, like the ones those stupid robots always use. I put as much of my energy as I could into the laser cannon and fired it. The blast was so powerful, it ripped right through the ice army an even blasted the ice twerp off of his stupid throne. Of course the blast didn't take Iceman out, rather than seriously tick him off; when he got up his eyes glowed like blue flames and suddenly the ice, which had already reached my legs, felt so cold, it started to burn.

The ice spread all over my body at a steady rate, but it still burned like crazy, which in itself was a surreal experience, considering the fact that getting burned was a sensation I thought i'd never feel. The ice reached my neck, and by then I was getting desperate; if only I had more heat, I could melt the ice right off of my body. I closed my eyes and concentrated, ignoring the pain that was engulfing my body. I focused on the sun, on it's power, it's heat, that's what I needed right now. So what if I wasn't in direct contact with the sun? The sun was a part of me, in me, was me. I focused hard, imagining the blazing heat of that beautiful star building inside of me, waiting to burst. Just when it seemed that I would be completely immersed in the ice, I screamed a crazy, spoiled brat, tantrum-like scream. I wanted this ice off of me, I wanted it to be warm in here, and I wanted it right now. When I screamed, the temperature in the room drastically rose. Any and all glass in range was immediately shattered into bits. In fact, the room where Jason and I watched Grant fight was now exposed. Of course, I heard Jason and Grant panicking and cussing like sailors, Jesus, those two were idiots. Anyway, my stunt had worked; I had successfully channeled the power of the sun and it was resonating from my mouth in the form of a sonic scream. By the way, for some reason, even though my scream was loud, it sounded different, like the screech of some kind of bird. The newfound warmth restored my powers to full, and I easily shattered my icy bonds. After escaping, I created my own army of Sun Warriors, as well as two awesome looking Solar Blades, and charged at Iceman. Iceman, though weakened, was not down and out yet, he created another ice army, and we clashed in an epic battle of ice and sun.

I left the ice warriors to my army, and charged Iceman directly. He had also created two ice blades, but I could tell he had no idea how to use them. I slashed at him from two different directions, and when he blocked my strikes, I kneed him in the chest, sending him staggering backwards. I relentlessly attacked Iceman with a flurry of slashes, kicks, and stabs. It was so funny to watch him fumble around, trying to stop me from hitting him but ultimately, he was outclassed. By the way did I forget to mention that I have been practicing fencing, and Kung-Fu since I was six? Hmmm, must have slipped my mind. Anyway, I slashed Iceman down in a flurry of strikes to the arms, chest, legs, and by crashing the butt of my sword into his thick pigheaded skull. Finally, I created a not so miniature sun, pulled him, his ice army in, or at least I would have if they could have survived that long, and once inside, I made the sun explode, unleashing an unbelievable blaze that that threw Iceman high into the air, making him crash into the ceiling. He would have hit the floor if I didn't help him, but I wasn't that mean. I created a bed made of light and he landed safely. Even if he was a jerk, I felt bad about hurting him. Maybe this was a part of an act, maybe he was being so mean so that I could learn to use my full power. I made myself a promise to apologize to him as soon as he woke up. Sure he was a little mean but everyone deserves a second chance for a good impression.

"Well done Allyson," said Fury's voice over the intercom. "You had me worried for a moment but you held in there, and pulled through, good job. Final test; Jason Fuller, you're up.

I was immediately whisked away to the looking room with Grant. Jason was now on the floor getting ready for battle. Whoever he had to fight against, the poor soul wouldn't stand a chance.

(Jason's perspective)

Hey guys, did you miss me (don't answer that.)? So those were some pretty good fights huh? Grant was a total beast, Allyson was a survivor, and pulled through in the end; now it was my turn. Light flashed in front of me, and of course, someone was there when the lights went out. The guy looked like and X-Man but was strangely different. He had silver hair that was pushed back, like the guy used a super fan to blow dry his hair. He was wearing a black leather battle suit, that had a lightning bolt stretching diagonally across his chest. At first this made me a little on edge, because if this guy had lightning powers, either I would win really quickly, or the entire room was gonna be blown to electrical shreds. I couldn't focus on that though, Fury had already begun to countdown and I needed to get into my battle zone. I took a deep breath, steeled my nerves and took a few seconds to think. If went into Speed Mode (yes, I know Grant thinks the name is stupid.) then I could easily take this guy out before there was any trouble, and the fight would end in less than a second; easy, plan, simple and effective. The countdown ended, and I charged at the guy for all I was worth.

Would you believe me if I told you that the fight lasted only a minute and thirty seconds? Well in actuality, it did but it was still one of the most intense, most brutal fights, I had ever had in my life. When I charged at the silver haired guy, he charged back, only he was charging at me at normal speed, well normal for me. Fury set me up to fight another speedster, this was gonna be sooo much fun. So the silver haired guy and I clashed, and exchanged blows. In less than a second we had both: punched at each other 100 times, ran all across the room 10 times, and had ran up and down the walls at least 5 times. I quickly realized that this guy was fast. Not just fast fast, I mean REALLY FAST. He blocked, countered, and dodged my moves with ease, he was probably holding back to make the fight more fair. When he punched at me, I had to block and dodge like crazy, even at my best, he still got in more than a few good hits to my chest, face and gut. There would be no way I'd be able to beat him with speed alone, clearly this guy was only meant for speed. However, I had more than speed, I had the power of lightning, and I knew how to use it really, really well. On second thirty, which by the way, felt more like minute thirty, I pulled out my Voltage Fists to fight the silver haired guy. I punched at him about twenty times and still didn't hit him. Although, I did notice that he was blocking me at the arms, and making use of dodging more often than he used to. I take it that he knew that lightning hurts. I used this as bait, and refrained from attacking him. When he did attack me with his punch barrage, I dodged as many as I could but when he did manage to hit me in the gut, I grabbed his arm like it was a life line, causing the guy to scream in pain. Then, while still running, I twisted his arm, yanked it and hit him in the face with a hard right fist. The guy flew sideways several feet and, because he was knocked off of his feet, he was moving in slow motion. I quickly took advantage of the situation, and pounced on him with a super speed, Voltage Fist, beatdown. I hit the guy probably about 30 times, before he hit the ground. Once he did, I continued my assault, and hit him another 50 times. By the way, all of this happened in 2 seconds; so we were only 32 seconds into the fight. The silver haired guy didn't take too kindly to my attack. Somehow, he managed to stop one of my strikes, uppercut me hard under my chin, and drop kick me across room.

How he managed to kick me so far, I don't know. However, I did know that he would be on me faster than I could think, so as soon I hit the floor, I created and electric barrier around myself. As quick as I was, I wasn't fast enough; the guy was inside my barrier, and had already begun to attack. I managed to get up on my feet and defend myself before the guy had a chance to beat up on me. For 5 seconds, we were locked in a furious battle under my electrical force field. Silver Hair attacked me with a barrage of punches, but I dodged, or blocked all of them. In fact, now that I thought about it, being under this barrier was good for me. This guy needed space to be dominant in a fight. By being trapped under this barrier, he couldn't run and had less room to maneuver. I was about to use this to my advantage. After blocking his attacks, I kicked at the guy and when he caught my leg, I quickly used my other foot to kick him in the face, forcing him to drop me, and then used my arms to propel myself off of the ground and into a flying kick, sending the guy flying straight into the electric barrier. After getting shocked, and spazzing up on the floor, I kicked him in the chest, through the barrier, and ten feet back, as soon as he stood up. The kick had a lightning bolt coming out of it, so it was pretty powerful. At this point I thought I had the fight won; silver dude was down, there was no way he'd have the strength to stand, so I summoned a thunderstrike to finish him. Instead of getting a crispy speedster, I saw lightning strike a metal floor, and felt the impact of a high speed punch find it's way to my face.

For the next 40 seconds, we fought like demons. I was getting better at speedster fighting, because Silver Hair wasn't hitting me as much, but I was still not making much progress. For every time I hit him once, he hit me another 10 times. If I tried any grab moves, he'd escape easily. I even tried blasting him with lightning, but even that failed. Lightning bolts were way too slow. Lightning blasts were faster, but not fast enough. And don't get me started on thunderbolts and thunder strikes, if I couldn't hit this guy with lightning blasts, what makes you think I could land a hit with a lightning strike from above, or a spear made of voltage? Anyway, I did manage to hit him with a good combo. As were were speed fighting, Silver Hair threw a barrage of speed punches at me, maybe twenty strikes in half a sec. I blocked ten of the punches, avoided three, and got six planted in my face, and gut .On the last punch, I managed to catch it, grab the guy's arm, and hit him across the face with a thunder charged back hand. I held on to him, and abruptly stopped, using our shared momentum against him, to throw him several feet across the room in a painful face slide manner. Of course, the guy still wasn't done, and got back up for more, charging me faster than I could even react. He punched me in the face, gut, wherever, more times than I could count. He kicked me around the floor, and in the stomach so many times, that I eventually stopped feeling the pain. What really took the cake was when he stood me up and attacked me with an onslaught of speed punches. How many times he hit me, I didn't know. All I did know was that I was seriously pissed off, and angry; I wanted to pound this guy into the next century. I screamed at the top of my lungs and and electric shock wave, bigger than any other I had ever made, erupted, knocking Silver Hair off his feet.

This time I was not gonna let him get his balance back. I went into Speed Mode Supreme, and charged the guy with some serious rage. I ran around his back, and kicked him hard; lighting blasted out of me feet with every kick. While he was flying towards a wall, I ran and kicked him to the right, then left, forward, backwards, kicked him into the air, and summoned a lightning strike to plant him into the ground. This was probably enough to finish him, or at least slow him down enough for me to easily finish the fight, but the thing was, I didn't want it to be that easy. I didn't know why, but I was really, really angry; angrier than I had ever been in my life. Maybe it was the fact that I had never been as outclassed in a fight before, other than by Grant or Nightcrawler; and even then it was different. When Grant and I fought, we had a mutual level of respect for one another in terms of skills, and power. We both realized that Grant was the superior warrior, due to his OP strength, but at the same time, Grant didn't let it go to his head. Likewise, Nightcrawler was my swordplay mentor and even though I had a lot left to learn, Nightcrawler praised my achievements, and politely corrected my mistakes. The guy I was fighting now was not like that. I could tell he thought of me as a lesser person, a slower person, and that I had no right to even be in the same room as him. People like him made me so unbelievably angry, for the first time in a while, I wanted to hurt someone not because I had to, but because I could.

While still in Speed Mode Supreme, I charged silver dude, and attacked him with a Voltage Fist beatdown. How long did I punch him? Well in slow people time, about 20 seconds. I completely rage quit all over his sorry butt, hitting every inch of flesh I could. I didn't bother to redouble my energy to keep my speed going, I just focused that amount of time for using the energy to inflict as much pain on the guy as inhumanly possible. To be honest, I think something snapped in my mind, for the time, I was insane with fighting frenzy. After I ran out of speed, I slammed my fists into the ground, causing a geyser of lightning to erupt under Silver Hair's feet, and launch him into the air. As he was soaring in the air, I created a thunderbolt. I must have been more enraged than I thought, because my thunderbolt was way more than supercharged. Before the rational side of my brain had time to ask: _Wait a second, couldn't this kill him?, _I hurled the death bolt at him. The explosion was so powerful that I was blown backwards and landed hard against a wall, knocking me out of my frenzy. I heard Allyson scream and with a jolt of guilt remembered that the windows were all shattered, I might have hurt her. I quickly got up and, thank God, saw that she was flying down unhurt over to Silver Hair, Grant came over to me and gave me a pat on the shoulder. I heard Allyson sing over Silver Hair's body and with another jolt of guilt, realized how much power I had unleashed through that thunderbolt. I remember what the energy felt like, and it was basically two times the power of the Final Flash I did on Ms. Marvel, who had super durability. I wasn't sure Silver Hair had as much resistance to thunder; I was pretty sure I had killed him. Thankfully after Allyson was done singing, he got up to his feet and began to walk, well limp anyway. Before I could go over to check on him the voice of Fury spread over the intercom.

"Wow Jason," he said. "Good job I guess, but save that kind of firepower for the enemy, ok? Task force operation: Triple X is now approved, report to the command center for mission briefing."

Before I could figure out what that meant, Grant, Alyson, and I were teleported away into a different room.


	7. Chapter 7: We Have To Find Magic Rocks?

**Chapter 7: We Have To Find Magic Rocks?**

At first I was scared that Fury was gonna put us through another simulation, but this room wasn't meant for fights (like anyone cares what things are for.). This room was small, about the size of and average high school classroom. Except for the one light shining down on the meeting table, everywhere else in the room was pitch black. The meeting table was made of glass, so it was see through, it also had the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it. Sitting at the table were six people. Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, some lady with brown hair wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, a Chinese guy with glasses, wearing a white dress shirt and a tie, a muscular white guy wearing a red polo shirt and some sort of high school cap, and…. my English teacher, Mrs. Kennedy. At first I did a double take, because there was no way that my 1st period English teacher was actually here right now; it didn't make sense. But after blinking my eyes several times, I came to terms that she actually was. She looked the same as she always did, brown power suit, with a white dress shirt, and blue tie, brown hair tied back in a bun, and blue rimmed glasses over her eyes. I didn't have anything against my English teacher, but I never liked the way she looked at me. Even though I was one of her best students, she always glared at me like I was a time bomb waiting to go off. She always sat me at the front of the class, called on me all the time to answer questions, and made sure to call me out every time I had gum in my mouth. However, today her look was much much worse. Her face wasn't glowering, but had a look of disappointing expectation, like she knew I would blast a kid with lightning, get the attention of a super spy agency, and become the leader of some teenage task force. To be honest, it made me a little angry. I glanced over at Grant, and saw that his expression was also surprised, plus, he was staring daggers at the guy in the red polo shirt; I had a vague suspicion that Allyson also had a hometown teacher that was present in the room. I glanced at Fury, who also caught my gaze. He flashed his (snigger, never gets old) eye at the three seats that were free directly in front of him, and the teacher group and nodded his head. I tapped Grant on the arm and pointed at the seats; he got the memo, passed the message on to Allyson and we all took our seats. We sat in awkward silence, staring down the adults for like 5 seconds before Fury finally broke the silence.

"Congratulations you three," he said. "You have officially passed you're training with flying colors, please contain your enthusiasm."

Grant and Allyson remained silent and I could tell we were all thinking the same thing.

"Ok, elephant in the room, i'm just gonna say it," I blurted out. "Fury, why am I seeing my, and possibly Grant and Allyson's, high school teachers?"

Everyone, including Fury looked stunned (probably because I didn't say "Colonel" first). It was even more shocking when Mrs. Kennedy started to chuckle. She looked over at the other teachers, and I swear her face said something like: _What did I tell you, no manners whatsoever._ She looked straight at me and smiled all creepy like, as if she spent the last few days thinking of new ways to embarrass me in front of my new friends.

"Hello Jason," she said. "How's my favorite student?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Thanks for asking, but seriously, why are you here?"

"Let Colonel Fury explain that."

She looked expectantly at Fury, and he heaved a big sigh.

"Grant, Allyson," he started. "I assume these two men look familiar to you as well.

"Yeah," said Allyson pointing to the Chinese guy. "That's my history teacher, Mr. Lee."

"Hello Ally," said the Chinese guy, who was smiling so genuine like, I could tell he actually liked Allyson. "For what it's worth, you made an A on your last history test.

Allyson smirked and looked at Grant, who was starring viciously at the guy wearing the red polo shirt. Now that I think of it, the guy was wearing a blue cap with a mascot on it and…...oh crap.

"What's up, coach?" said Grant in a deadly calm voice. "How's the team doing?"

The coach remained silent for a few seconds before responding.

"They're doing ok," he said. "Scott Carlson took up you're position, he's not as good as you, but he'll do."

"Cool, that's cool."

I couldn't bear to watch this train wreck continue, so I intervened due to the fact that Grant looked like he was on the verge of rampaging.

"Ok," I started. "So is anyone gonna-"

"Going to," Mrs. Kennedy corrected me.

"Is anyone _going to_ explain what's going on here?"

Fury reached into his trench coat and pulled out some kind of clicker. He pressed a button, and a holographic screen popped up over the middle of the table. Flashing on the screen were images of Grant, Allyson, and, myself. The scary thing was that these images were at least 3 years old. I saw a few pictures of me in my freshman year, the time Doris and I went to Las Vegas together, even me at my first middle school dance (no I didn't have a date). I saw a bunch of other images of Grant and Allyson too. I didn't know Allyson was a cheerleader, or that Grant was also on his high school step team. Anyway, Fury clicked another button, and turned off the projection leaving me more confused than before.

"Because you're confused, i'll talk slowly," he said. "First of all, your teachers here are really S.H.I.E.L.D agents who have been working undercover for 2 years, monitoring you three. Second, we've known that the three of you were mutants, since you were 8th graders."

"How?" I asked. "Allyson didn't get her powers until last year, me and Grant got our powers two days ago, how on earth could you have tracking us for so long?"

Fury pressed another button on his clicker thing and another hologram popped up. This time the hologram was showing a picture of the United States. On New York was a blinking blue dot, a green one was on Nebraska, and on Alabama was a yellow one.

"Three years ago," said Fury. "Our ethereal matrix sensor went nuts, picking up three dormant but very powerful sources of energy. At first we thought that the sources of the power had to be artifacts or weapons, but when we sent agents in to investigate, we ended up at your individual addresses. Needless to say, my cohorts were less than thrilled to discover that the sources of three nearly unlimited powers were dormant in the bodies of three 8th graders. Some of em' wanted to kill you on the spot, make it look like an accident and be done with it. Others wanted to bring you in right away,and train you as weapons for the government; however, me being the compassionate guy I am, decided to leave you be and wait til' you were older.

"And then what?" asked Grant.

"Then, I was going to see how'd you turn out, if you were good, i'd let you live your lives while I watched from a distance."

"And if we were bad?" asked Allyson.

"Let's not go there," said Fury. "Let's just assume you were gonna turn out good either way."

"So what's up with this whole change of plan?" I asked Fury.

"Well for starters, you super charged your childhood bully with 1000 volts of electricity," said Fury.

"You're never gonna let me live that down will you?"

"Not in this lifetime. Anyway, we changed our plans up, because just last week, our ethereal matrix sensor went absolutely insane, multiple impossibly high power energies quite literally rained down from the sky, and landed in random places all over America. We knew they were artifacts simply because, unless they were Asgardians, people don't rain down from the sky."

"So why didn't you look for them?" asked Allyson.

"We couldn't Miss Grace. Like I said, our EM sensor went insane, the mass multitude of power was too much for it to read."

He pressed another button on his clicker and the hologram switched to a map of the whole world. On this map was a bunch of multicolored sonar waves traveling in every direction across every continent, if this map was supposed to actually help me find something specific, i'd never get anywhere.

"This was the way the map looked last week," said Fury. "Believe me Ms. Grace, if we were able to efficiently track these artifacts, we would; but for a while, we couldn't track an egg."

"But that still doesn't explain why you brought us here all of a sudden," said Allyson.

"I'm coming to that Ms. Grace, please be patient."

Allyson looked slightly abashed even though she shouldn't. Fury was going way too slow, I could run 1000 laps around him, before he actually got to the point.

"I assume you all know about the five attacks on St. Mark Industries that happened a few nights ago?" Fury asked us.

We all nodded our heads, it's kinda hard to miss when a bunch of super villains decide to ransack five major business headquarters, slaughter hundreds of innocents, and steal truckloads of presents meant for the homeless and the orphaned.

"Well," Fury continued. "When we arrived on the scene-

"You mean after you showed up too late," I interrupted.

Everyone held their breath, even Mrs. Kennedy looked stun. I didn't care; S.H.I.E.L.D. and their heroes failed to show up when they were actually needed, and I wasn't gonna play good boy while they patted themselves on the back for nothing. If Fury had a problem with that, he could take it up with my thunderbolts.

"When we arrived on the scene," he continued. "We scanned the areas, and found residual traces of the energy levels that showed up on the EM sensor. We knew something like this would probably happen, it was only a matter of time before people like Doom started to get involved; unfortunately, we just weren't fast enough."

I held back the intense desire to say, "got that right".

"So exactly how many of those things are there?" asked Grant.

"In total," said Fury. "Seven of them."

"So that means that the others are at the remaining St. Mark buildings, why haven't you sent any heroes to bust some heads?"

"Because the remaining artifacts, are no longer in the St. Mark buildings, or in Doom's possession either."

"What, how?"

"As soon as we realized that we were dealing with magic, by the way the artifacts are indeed magic, we called in the greatest sorcerer known to mankind, Dr. Strange."

"Dr. Strange? Dude, that guy is so awesome, do we get to meet him too?"

"Maybe somewhere down the line, but not right now. Anyway, although the Doc wasn't able to identify what it is we were dealing with, he did manage to buy us some time to figure it out."

Fury pressed another button on the clicker and a video played. Dr. Strange was in the middle of some forest chanting some magical stuff, while purple energy, and weird symbols spun around him like a tornado. After he finished whatever it is he was doing, the energy burst in a massive wave, way bigger than anything i've ever created (then again, since i'm new at this, I probably shouldn't compare so soon). The hologram switched to a view of the entire planet, which had a massive wave of magic energy resonating across it, I wondered how people wouldn't notice that, but then again, I didn't.

"What you've just seen, was a recording of what happened on December 11th at 12 A.M.," said Fury. "While you were sleeping you're pretty little heads off, we took action to make sure Dr. Doom didn't get a foothold on those artifacts."

"What did he do?" I asked.

"That magic wave was meant to locate and scatter any and all of those artifacts randomly over the world, even we don't know exactly where they all are."

"Doesn't that defeat the purpose of trying to find them?"

"You'd think so, but the thing is, that magic wave helped stabilize our EM sensor, it will take a while, and it won't happen all at once but we will be able to get accurate readings on all of the artifacts."

"Ok, this is all very fascinating and stuff, but you still won't answer the one question that we wanna know: Why. Are. We. Here?"

Fury put his face in his palm and shook his head, hey it's not my fault i'm a little curious as to why S.H.I.E.L.D. decided to abduct and train three random mutant teenagers; you'd react the same way.

"Trust me, I'm getting close to that part, it'll be worth the wait, just let me finish speaking words."

Fury pressed the clicker again, and the holographic screen went away.

"At first, our original plan was to deploy The Avengers to find and collect these artifacts, but they're all on various solo missions, we can't recall them. Also, on the exact morning that you and Grant got your powers, I received some kind of message from three strange….let's call them ladies. They gave me a vision so to speak, saying that you three would play a part in getting these artifacts, and keeping them out of the wrong hands."

"And you believed them?" I asked.

"When you've been in this business as long as I have, you learn to heed the warnings of mystical beings, no matter how much you don't want to."

"So, did these ladies tell you anything else?"

"As a matter of fact they did. They told me that in 10 seconds precisely, they will speak to you directly, and tell you everything else we need to know about these artifacts, so have fun with that."

Fury pressed another button on the clicker, and everyone except for Grant, Allyson, and I, were warped out of the room in a flash of light. At first I thought Fury was giving us another test or something, I mean there was no way some old ladies were gonna just show up from nowhere and give us visions right? Yeah…...let's just say I learned not to doubt anything else Fury said. Seven seconds later, the lights in the room went out and the room started to fill with a thick purple haze. How did I know that the haze was purple even though the lights were out? Well simply put, I could see it. For some reason even though it was pitch black in the room, I could see the table, my friends, and the purple haze clear as daylight. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. You know that feeling you get when you go into an abandoned building, but feel like something creepy might pop out and attack you at any second? Now imagine that feeling multiplied by twenty, but actually KNOWING that something dangerous is in the room with you. As soon as the purple mist filled the room, I felt multiple presences; ancient, powerful, unnatural presences. I knew from the moment I felt them, that they were unnatural beings, things that should not have existed in the first place. Their presence felt like a snake slithering and shuffling through the air, and under the ground. I could feel them watching me with a sort of gleeful anticipation, as if I were a fascinating new species that they couldn't wait to study. After a few seconds of being royally spooked out, I felt the three presences move behind me, then under the chairs and table. A few seconds later, an arm slammed on the table, and started to pull whatever it was connected to upwards.

Let me tell you something. If you are a fan of zombie movies, you wouldn't be after you saw this sight. The arm was dark gray with spidery fingers, that also happened to be razor sharp, I know that because her fingers scraped against the table, and the sound was only slightly less painful as a nail on a chalkboard. Other arms also made their way on to the table and pulled themselves upward until I got to see the….. let's go with 'ladies'. The first thing that had me scared stiff was their hair. It was definitely hair but, their hair seemed sentient, as if each thread had a life of it's own. Even more scary was the fact that their hair seemed to be angry and agitated, as if it knew that it was connected to an abomination freak of the universe. Their hair constantly shifted from snakes, to dragon heads, lion heads, even demon figured shapes. The next thing was their physique. It was strange, because I could tell that these three 'ladies were once very beautiful, but had given it up to become whatever this is. Their bodies weren't hideously deformed or anything, but their skin was grey, covered in blisters and callouses, plus I could see their veins. By the way, their veins glowed with some type of intense purple energy that I could only guess had to be magic; made me wonder what their blood type would have identified as. Finally, the heart stopping, most terrible thing about the three ladies, were their eyes. They were black, soulless, and empty of life. No, their eyes weren't empty sockets, but basically black holes, like the ones in space. I couldn't help but look into those eyes, and instead of seeing emptiness I got a different but more terrible feeling. It was if I was looking into the eyes of time itself. When I looked into those eyes I saw what must have been the beginning and the end of entire universes; it was as if eternity had rolled itself into balls and placed itself into the sockets of these (no offense) hideous, soulless, emotionless, hags.

The trio moved toward me and my friends the way a stereotypical zombie does, in slow, grasping, ungraceful shuffling. I wanted to run, I wanted to blast them to dust, I wanted to hide under my covers and stay there for the rest of my life; unfortunately I couldn't move. Was it because of fear? Yeah, you could say that. Was it because they were working some type of magic that kept me from moving or reacting in the face of certain death? For the sake of my manhood, I will also allow that as a possibility. Either way, I was glued to my chair, and I wasn't going anywhere. The three ladies continued to shuffle forward across the table, moaning and hissing, exposing their black fangs, that dripped purple liquid. At first I thought that might have been saliva or something but as the liquid made contact with the table, it started to hiss and burn right through the glass. Acid spit, why not? Once the three ladies were a few feet away from me and my friends, they stopped moving, straightened up into an all fours position, and just stared at us. I tried not to look into the eyes of the one that was focused on me (three ladies, three teens, one for each of us; keep up people, it's not that hard) but I couldn't turn my head away. Now that she was up close, I could see that the infinite darkness that was her eyes, seemed to be swirling and churning. More than that, I felt myself, my identity, my memories, being sucked out of me and into those eyes. For a moment, I forgot who I was, where I came from, my real parents, my favorite things to do, getting my powers, the final exam, everything. Then, just as I started to panic on the inside, the woman's eyes swirled in reverse and I felt everything return to me just as quickly as it left. If you haven't had your memories forcibly taken away from you, then you my friend are a lucky person. My head felt fuzzy, disoriented, and a little painful, I imagine this is how a hangover would feel. It was if my head was trying to reprocess everything that it knew, but didn't know that it knew (yeah I know, it's confusing). I don't know why the woman decided to take my memories away, but I knew that she had studied them. In less than a second, the old hag had downloaded and processed 17 years of my memories and experiences, she probably knew me better than I knew myself. Finally, after about 10 seconds of awkward, scary, and painful silence, the ladies finally spoke.

They didn't move their mouths (they were still dripping acid spit all over the table, it was starting to melt through the metal floors) but I heard their voices in my head louder than a stadium full of fans.

"_Jason Fuller," _they said in unison_. "Champion of Zeus, Chosen of Poseidon, Heir of Hermes, Lord of the Storms._ _We are the Norn-Fates._ "_We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy, but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril, and will be greatly affected in the events to come."_

Ok, remember how I said the scariest things about these Norn-Fates was their eyes? Yeah…..not anymore. To say that their voices were ancient, powerful, and forbearing, would be the king of all understatements. In truth, their voices gave me the same feel that their eyes did; as if I was hearing the beginning, as well as the end. It was as if their voice had the power to create, reshape, and bend reality with a single word. Simultaneously, it was like their voices were a compilation of graveyards, like they could speak death or destruction on anything in the universe, and it would have no choice but to stop existing. Yet, whenever they stopped talking, I forgot what their voice sounded like; this would probably be better for my sanity in the long run. After speaking, the Norn-Fates went silent again and of course didn't move a muscle for another 5 seconds. Then, in a quick heart stopping action the Norn-Fates reached out, grabbed each of us by our faces, and quickly pulled them closer, until our foreheads were touching theirs. I had no choice but to gaze into the eyes of Norn-Fate that grabbed me, and felt my soul being pulled away from my body, and into those eyes. Everything went dark for a moment, and when the lights came on again, I was on some bridge, looking at the outline of an amazing city.

The city was made of white marble, and from what I could see, was a mix of ancient Greek and Roman architecture, mixed with modern day building styles. I felt my soul self take flight (not of my own will) and was flown over a large portion of the city. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew that this place was Olympus, home of the Greek gods, and yes, I was totally geeking out. I mean can you really blame me? I'm a PJO (Percy Jackson &amp; The Olympians) fan, this was my greatest fantasy come to life, I was literally flying above the home of Zeus and the other gods. As I passed through the air, I noticed that the city had a amphitheater, as well as a Coliseum. There were buildings shaped like ancient temples, I saw a smoke billowing in the distance that had to have come from some sort of forge, plus it seemed that nobody lived in anything except for a mansion in this place. Also, there were a lot of cool looking buildings in Olympus. One temple had grape vines growing all around it's structure, so it had to be related to Dionysus. There was this awesome golden tower that glowed like the sun, so it had to be for Apollo. Plus, there was this ginormous temple made completely out of storm clouds, with lightning flashing in the pillars; obviously for the big man himself. One more thing, in Olympus, everyone either traveled by flying pegasi, or golden chariots pulled through the streets by huge lions. I could go on all day about this place, but unfortunately I can't; I'm on a time limit.

I felt myself being flown up to some mountain that was dotted with mansions, temples, and other types of Greek architecture, except these buildings were made of solid gold. At the top of the mountain was this huge palace that shined so bright, it was almost hard to look at. The walls were engraved with pictures of gods, Greek heroes, and people riding chariots. I knew this had to be the palace of the gods. I was flown through the giant golden doors, and was whisked through a bunch of other walls, until I found myself in the throne room of the gods. To be honest, the throne room was really big and elaborate (the floors had waves of light travel throughout the perimeter every 10 seconds), but the actual thrones were kind of underwhelming. Yeah I know, just because it didn't live up to my PJO expectations, that shouldn't make it bad; but still, I expected more. I wanted the thrones to be super personalized for each individual god and goddess, but all I got were a dozen fancy looking solid gold thrones, with precious gems embedded in the seats, and armrests. In fact, the only way I could tell whose throne was whose, was the gem embedded symbols on the chair backs. For example, Zeus' throne had a thunder bolt engraved in diamonds, Ares had a skull made of rubies on his throne (go figure), Aphrodite had a dove made of amethysts on her's, and yeah you get the picture. Anyway, I was floating in the throne room of the gods, and suddenly, I felt time shift backwards. It was as if the room was being sucked by a vacuum. Images of past meetings, celebrations, even weddings, were being sucked into it. Finally, time settled, and I found myself in the company of seven of the Olympians. They were all sitting on their personal thrones, looking all grumpy and powerful, well except for Apollo and Hermes. Oh yeah that reminds me, I have to list the gods who were there. Well plain and simple: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades (who was sitting on a throne made of shadows), Hercules, Apollo, Ares, and Demeter. Zeus was this tall, muscular guy with all white eyes, and long flowing orange hair and beard. He was wearing a green loincloth and a golden breastplate. Poseidon on the other hand, was this old looking, but still very muscular guy with blue skin, long grey hair, and a long grey beard. He was wearing a long blue and purple loincloth with seashell patterns, a long purple cloak, golden arm and leg bands, and was holding this sick looking golden trident that glowed with blue energy. Hades, well Hades was this white guy who was dressed in a black robe, and had his hood over his head. I didn't know what his face looked like, but his eyes glowed with a dark purplish fire, that made me very very glad I was only looking at a memory, and wasn't really here. Hercules was a super muscular dude with brown hair, wearing a green loincloth, and a golden belt with a lion head as the buckle. He was also wearing classical sandals, that had straps reaching up to his thighs. He was easily the most laid back guy in the room; I mean he literally reclining on a throne made of clouds. Apollo (yes I know this is getting redundant) was muscular, extremely handsome, and had long flowing blonde hair. He was wearing a white tunic with a giant gold belt that had some type of star symbol on it. He was also wearing a flowing yellow cape, and boots made of solid gold. Ares, scared the living crap out of me. He was wearing a black breastplate with a picture of a skull on it. He had a traditional Greek battle skirt on, and was rocking some boots that were either made of iron, or steel. His arms were huge. Not as big as Zeus' or Hercules', but big enough to know that the guy could strangle a great white shark with little to no problem. His face was covered in a black Greek war helmet with white plumage. His physique wasn't the scary part, I was pretty sure I could take him on (yeah right). No the scary thing about him, was his aura. This guy radiated aggression naturally. He seemed like the kind of guy who would pick a fight, start a war, and slaughter millions just for the fun of it. If I ever met any of the Olympians, I hoped Ares was not one of them. Finally, Demeter was a woman with long brown hair, wearing a green dress with leaf patterns in them. Her arms were adorned in golden bracelets and she was absently growing different types of plants out of her hands. All seven Olympians sat silently, until Zeus finally broke the ice.

"Brothers, sister, my sons," he started. "You are all aware of why I called for this assembly to take place."

"Of course father," said Hercules. "Thou wouldst not cease with such talk for the past two moons."

"I know right?" said Ares. "Seriously, he was all like: _we must meet urgently, that fate of Olympus is at stake, listen to me as my incredibly loud voice destroys your eardrums_."

"Brother, why dost thou continue to speak in such foreign tongue?" asked Hercules.

"3000 years from now, people will start talking like this, and it's way better than the crap people talk these days, so I'll stick with it."

"Enough!" Zeus boomed. "We do not have time for this prattle, let us focus on the task at hand."

"Fine," said Ares. "Let's get this over with, i'm working on this new thing called a gun; should have a prototype for it in around 2000 years."

"Humph," scoffed Demeter. "You men and your toys."

"As you all know," said Zeus. "Our enemy's forces are rising once again, and are attempting to overthrow Olympus. I have bartered with Odin of Asgard, and have successfully gained his allegiance. But even so, we face perilous times, and are odds of victory are grim."

"Who are we fighting again?" Apollo asked out of nowhere.

"The Titans, the Giants, 12,000 wild Centaurs, 9,000 Minotaurs, 10,000 snake woman led by Medusa, The Nemean Lion, 5,000 Hydras, The Chimera, and Typhoon." said Ares with a scary smile on his face.

Apollo's face was so priceless, even I laughed; which was strange considering the fact that my voice didn't work. Ares and Hercules were bellowing and doubling over and just having a good laugh.

"Worry not brother," said Hercules. "Our battle will be glorious and worthwhile, even if I do have to fight alongside the Odinson."

"Yeah, don't look so scared twinkle boy," said Ares. "Even I agree with Hercules, and you gotta believe it's something serious when I actually agree with this bastard son of a mortal whore."

I expected Hercules to attack or something, but he smiled, laughed, and continued to recline on his cloud.

"Yes," said Zeus. "We have a great challenge ahead, but together we will succeed. However, we must take certain precautions, this war will challenge our strength more than they have ever been challenged before, our powers will greatly diminish over the course of these many battles, and if we are not careful, we will soon be overthrown."

"What do you suggest we do then, brother?" asked Demeter.

Zeus snapped his fingers and a giant ball of dark purple magic, that was spinning at like 1000 mph, appeared in the center of the throne room.

"I have struck a deal with Hecate, the goddess of magic," he said. "In return for her allowing to learn forms of magic from other pantheons, she has given me the magic necessary for us to fight in this war, without fretting about the toll it will take on our powers."

"How so?" asked Apollo.

"Once we thrust our hands into this small pocket of the Infinity Vortex, all of our godly powers will be siphoned away from us, and will take the form of stones, they shall be called the Stones of Olympus."

"You want us to put our hands in some stupid magic ball, that'll take away all of our powers?" asked Ares. "Doesn't that defeat the purpose of trying to hold on to them, pops?"

"Firstly my son," said Zeus. "Never refer to me as pops. Second, this process will allow us to have access to an emergency, and nearly unlimited source of power, should this war prove to be too taxing, we can access these stones to replenish our power, it is the only way we can hope to fight this war, without endangering Olympus in the process."

"Wait a minute, if this is so important, why are the other Olympians not here to perform this ritual with us?" asked Demeter.

"Because my sister," said Zeus. "The elements of: thunder, water, sun, plant life, war, strength, and death, are necessary to keep the world in balance. Without such elements, this world would dissolve into chaos, the other Olympians are not here, simply because they are not needed."

"Well I can understand that, but if war keeps the world in balance, why is Ares here, shouldn't Athena be here instead."

Ares started to get off of his throne, conjuring a war axe, that I could only guess was not meant for gardening. But before he could completely stand up, Zeus' eyes flashed with thunder, and a bolt of lightning struck the floor missing Ares by a foot. Ares sat down in a hurry, but still stared Demeter down with intense hatred.

"The reason for that Demeter," Zeus started. "Is because Ares is war unrestricted, unbound, and raw. Athena represents war that is hindered by strategy and rules; war that has been safely bottled. Mortals, and even gods do not naturally battle with a plan of attack. Instead, they focus only on hurting their opponent until they are unable to move. This is why Ares is here, he represents war in it's natural state."

"You say that as if it is a good thing Zeus," said Demeter.

Zeus pretended not to hear this, and continued with the council meeting.

"All in favor for creating the stones of Olympus?" he asked.

Everyone raised their hands, and thunder shook the room.

"It is agreed," said Zeus.

"Brother," said Poseidon." "When the process is done, are we to carry these stones in our possession always?"

"No Poseidon," said Zeus. "We will be able to call upon the power of the stones whenever we see fit, regardless of distance; besides if the power of the all of the stones were to be used in once place, the massive ethereal energy being used, could have dire consequences for the the earth. I suggest that each of us enchant our individual stones, and conceal them in sacred places, to protect them from those who would misuse this power."

"Also, you still have not addressed the matter about why we are giving up all of our power to create these stones, when the battle is yet to come."

Zeus snapped his fingers, and 7 vials filled with some kind of diamond-like liquid, appeared in his right hand. He flicked his wrist, and the vials flew away, and placed themselves in the hand of each Olympian.

"Upon completing the ritual, all you must do is drink from these vials," said Zeus. "These vials are special potions made by Hecate herself, they will immediately replenish our powers; so the threat of losing your powers is no longer an issue. Before we begin, does everyone have a specific place they have in mind to be the safe haven for their stone?"

"I shall enchant my stone to inhabit places where plant life is at it's strongest." said Demeter. "Considering the fact that humans have a nasty habit of cultivating land, I suspect it's options will run scarce in a few thousand years."

"I'll enchant my stone to inhabit the skies, where the presence of the sun is present," said Apollo. That'll make it hard for those nasty heathens to track it down."

"I'll stick mine in places where the bloodiest battles take place," said Ares. "By the way, as soon as we win this war, my stone will stay put on the battlefield, at least for a while."

"I shall command my stone to forever reside in the cave of the Nemean Lion," said Hercules. "That is where my greatest act of strength took place."

"I'll keep my stone with me in the Underworld," said Hades in a dark, brooding, and gravel like voice that was only slightly less frightening than the voices of the Norn-Fates. "Nobody ever comes there, unless they are, or want to be dead."

Hercules looked like he wanted to say something about that, but thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut.

"I shall place my stone in the care of the Atlanteans," said Poseidon. "They have always been my chosen people; I trust they will keep my stone safe."

"As for me," said Zeus. "I shall enchant my stone to inhabit only the most violent of storms or thunderclouds. Now let the creation of the Stones of Olympus begin."

Demeter stepped up first, and thrust her hand into the magic orb without any hesitation whatsoever. The orb started to shake violently, and the color changed from purple to green. Energy spewed everywhere like crazy, and because it was Demeter's energy, the waves transformed into gusts of leaves, crops, and other nature stuff. Demeter screamed, and after 10 seconds, the orb settled down and spat out a green stone, about the size of a pinky finger. The stone was shaped like a tree, or maybe broccoli. Demeter grabbed it, drank her potion, and went back to her throne, where she started to enchant the stone.

Apollo was up next. He slowly inched his hand into the orb like a little baby pee pants, and of course screamed like a little girl. The orb's color changed into a really bright yellow, and started spewing waves of light everywhere; it kind of reminded me of one of Allyson's mini suns. After his ordeal, the orb spit out a golden stone shaped like a sun. Apollo went back to his throne, whining like a little $I% *, and started to enchant his stone.

Ares stepped up next, and put his hand in the orb. Either because he was way tougher than I thought, or because he didn't wanna be a little baby pee pants like his brother, Ares did not scream; he barely even grunted. When he made contact with the orb, it violently erupted into a dark red blaze, spreading fire, blood, and energy weapon constructs everywhere. After the weapon spree died down, the orb spit out a red stone, that was the shape of a deformed bullet. Ares grabbed it, walked back to his throne, and began to enchant his stone. I swear I heard him call Apollo a wimp before he sat down.

Hercules stepped up to create his stone next. He laughed like a madman when his hand made contact with the orb, which made me wonder whether or not he had a pain fetish. The orb's energy changed into a dark orange color, and literally roared like a lion, until it spat out Hercules' stone. The guy must have seriously had a thing for lions, because his stone was shaped like a lion's head. He walked back over to his throne, and sat down. He didn't enchant the stone, but I doubt he could have anyway.

After Hercules, Hades stepped up. He floated a few feet off the ground on a cloud of shadows to the orb, and put his hand inside. He didn't make a single sound as the orb drained his power, but he didn't have to. The energy waves off of the orb were a really dark purple and black. The sounds of horrified screams, monster growls, and horrible crying filled the air. His stone couldn't have been spat out too soon. It was dark purple, and shaped like a skull. Hades floated back to his throne and plopped on it, not even bothering to enchant it.

Poseidon stepped up next, and put his hand on the orb. He strained a little, but he gritted his teeth, and toughed it out. The orb turned blue, and lightning flashed everywhere, followed by multiple waves of seawater. Luckily for me, I wasn't really here. The other Olympians however, got very salty baths. Finally, right before the gods decided to clobber him, the orb spit out a blue stone, shaped like a sea urchin. Poseidon walked back to his throne and sat down, ignoring the murderous glances of all the other Olympians.

Finally, the big guy himself got up and walked to the orb. If Zeus did scream, I wouldn't be able to tell, because as soon as he put his hand in the orb, the loudest, most nerve racking thunder clap filled every area of the throne room. The orb changed not to another color, but took the form of a swirling thundercloud ball. Lightning flashed inside, first as little sparks, then bigger sparks. Three seconds later, everything went completely insane. Lightning bolts, way more intense than i've ever seen in my life, crashed everywhere in the room. The ceiling, the walls, the floors, nothing was safe. As loud as the thunder was, Apollo gave it a run for it's money. His scream was so loud, I couldn't tell if it was him or the thunder. At least he was smart though. As soon as the insane lightning storm started, he created a sun barrier around himself. In fact, Poseidon put a barrier made of water to protect himself, Demeter created and oak tree out of nothing to shield her, and Hades was shrouded in a barrier of dark shadowy energy. Ares and Hercules on the other hand were not so lucky. Either because they couldn't, or were too stupid not to, they were left barrierless. Ares paid the price first, by receiving a lightning bolt to the head. Luckily, he had a helmet on, because it took most of the damage, although it did shatter like glass. Hercules got blasted square in the chest ,and even he couldn't laugh at a million volts of electricity. Finally, after 10 seconds of being in an electric field, the orb spit out Zeus' stone. His stone was hard to describe, because it kept shifting. One second it was a mini thunderbolt, another second, it was an eagle; it even turned into a bull one time. Zeus took the stone, enchanted it, and walked back to his throne.

"It is done," he said, right before some guy wearing a red kilt, a white cape, and winged sandals burst into the room (yeah I knew that he was Hermes).

"Lord Zeus," he started. " The Asgardians have entered our dimension to negotiate battle strategy, shall I send them here.?"

"Yes, Hermes," said Zeus. "Assemble the rest of the council as well."

Hermes nodded, bowed, and took off in a blur, even I had trouble seeing him. Everything went dark and hazy again, and at first I thought my vision was over, but when my sight righted itself, I was in New York City.

I was on the top of some random skyscraper, fighting Dr. Doom himself. We were going at it like beasts, blasting lightning, clashing swords, even battling in Speed Mode. Suddenly, Dr. Doom blasted me with some type of red energy, and as soon as I hit the ground, tree roots as thick as Anacondas, wrapped around my arms and legs, trapping me to the ground, or roof I guess. Suddenly I felt, and I do mean ACTUALLY felt, giant thorns pierce my thighs, biceps, hands, calves, and feet. Furthermore, I felt some type of energy, that felt like it was burning and shocking me at the same time, surge through the thorns that had pierced me. The pain was so intense, so mind blowingly awful, that I couldn't help but scream an awful, bone chilling, super agonizing scream. In the midst of my pain, I saw the blurry image of Dr. Doom create a black sword with red highlighted edges, and stomp his foot on my chest. He looked like he was saying something, but I couldn't hear it. Finally, he raised his sword, and brought it down in a stabbing motion. Right before the blade ended my life, my vision dispersed into black haze, and I found myself head down on the meeting room glass table.

(Grant's vision)

Hey guys, it's me again. Just so you know, Jason, Allyson, and I had the exact same vision, concerning the whole gods and Olympus thing, so i'll just skip to my personal vision, you know, the one we all had after seeing the creation of those magic rocks. By the way, listen to what those creepy hags said to me before they grabbed my face.

_Grant Jackson, Champion of Gaea, Titan of the Earth, Chosen of Hercules. We are the Norn-Fates. We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril and will be greatly affected in the events to come._

I was in some type of giant basement. Broken and bended pipes were strewn all over the room, and Jason was lying unconscious next to a severely bent pipe. I wanted to see if he was okay, but as it turned out, I was a little busy at the moment. Allyson and I were fighting against the legendary X-Men villain, Magneto; guess that explains all the bent pipes. Allyson was wearing some type of black body armor, and now that I think about it, so was Jason. Allyson and I were fighting against Magneto with all that we had, but the guy was way too good. Anytime I tried to fly into him and pound him into the floor, he either blasted me with some kind of purple lightning or threw lobs of metal at me from every direction. Allyson tried blasting him with her sun powers, but she wasn't making any progress either. Flame streams, sun balls, everything she threw at the guy was either blocked by a purple lightning barrier, or sheets of metal. Magneto blasted the two of us with an intense lightning blast that actually hurt me, and after a brief blank in my vision, I found that he had wrapped us and Jason in a bunch of metal pipes, that covered us from the neck down to our feet, and were engulfed in that purple lightning. I tried to bust free, but for some reason I couldn't. No matter how hard I bucked and struggled, the pipes stayed shut around my body; I was completely defenseless. Magneto raised his hands, and I felt myself being forced into the air. Magneto raised his hands again, and a bunch of metal pipes floated into the air, and sharpened themselves to a point. That didn't scare me, but Allyson and Jason weren't invulnerable like I was; Magneto was gonna kill them, while I was helpless to watch. Something caught my eye in the middle of the floating metal barrage, a double bladed war axe that gleamed with a silvery purple glint. For some reason I was afraid of that axe, I don't know why or how, but I knew that axe could hurt me, kill me even, and it just happened to be hovering right in my general direction. Magneto thrust his hands out, and the metal barrage flew straight at me and my friends. Right before we all died, everything went black, and when my vision came back, I was face down on the table.

(Allyson's vision)

Hello again readers, wow never a dull moment in this place huh? So, because Jason basically covered all the basic stuff, I'll skip to the part where me, my friends, and everyone on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier die; oops! Spoiler alert. Oh, but first here's what those creepy ladies said to me.

_Allyson Grace, Avatar of the Sun, Singer of Life, Chosen of Apollo, Blessed of the Angels, we are the Norn-Fates. We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril and will be greatly affected in the events to come._

I was high in the air. I was level with the clouds, the ground was like 30,000 feet below me, and I was in the middle of a fight with an enemy that could manipulate dark matter; don't know how I knew that, but I did. She was wearing a purple T-shirt, black leggings, and a mask that covered her face. She didn't look much older than I did, but I could tell she was on the side of evil; that made me really, really sad. We were blasting away at each other. Me with sun power, her with some kind of black shadowy energy. Whenever our blasts collided, they made some kind of white dot that intensified gravity. I wasn't affected much, but it was enough to keep me off balance. Me and this other girl fought each other for a while, blasting away, and even creating construct swords to duel with from time to time. After like three minutes of fighting, our blades clashed together, and we held them in that position, struggling for dominance. The gravity output was so intense, that we were both flung backwards several feet before I regained my balance. Suddenly the sky went dark. Thunder sounded, and lightning flashed for miles. On another ship similar to the Helicarrier but more sinister looking, and made completely of metal, some guy in a green robe raised his fist and shouted really loud. A second later, a huge, powerful bolt of lightning, bigger than any lightning strike I had ever seen, struck the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, and blasted off two of it's turbines. I probably shouted or something, but my voice didn't work. I didn't know what to do; Grant and Jason were inside the Helicarrier, I knew that for sure. If it crashed to the ground, they, and everyone in the Helicarrier would die. Before I could do anything, the girl I was fighting grabbed me by my throat, and opened her mouth. She didn't kiss me or anything, but I doubt she could have anyway; because coming out of her mouth, was a black hole. I tried to get free, but her grip was way too strong, and on top of that, the black hole in her mouth was draining all of my Sun Energy. I felt myself getting weaker, and weaker; I struggled to remain conscious, to keep fighting, but it was no good. As all of my energy left my body, all I could think about was how Jason and Grant were gonna die in a Helicarrier crash, and how I was completely useless to save them. My vision blacked out, and when I came to, I was lying on a glass table.

(Jason's perspective)

I groggily got up, but man did I have the world's biggest headache. It was as if those Norn-Fates had opened my head, and shoved a whole library in there; thank God that they weren't here anymore, I wouldn't be able to handle the sight of those three hags again. I looked over at Grant and Allyson, who were also recovering from their visions. I wondered if they saw the same things I did. I hoped they didn't see the part about me dying, that was something I wanted to keep to myself. A second later, Fury and the rest of the teacher club flashed back into the room, their faces were so calm and balanced, it made me hate them a little bit. I mean seriously, wouldn't you be totally pissed if you got mentally screwed over while someone else watched all carefree?

"Well that was interesting." said Fury.

I wanted to retort, but since I was recovering from my mental hangover, I decided to play nice with Fury for a little while.

"Yeah," said Grant. "Getting a mental short film jammed into my head was always on the top of my bucket list."

"Speaking of which," said Fury. "What did you see, what are the artifacts, what do they have to-"

"The Stones of Olympus" I blurted out.

"What?" asked Fury.

"Those artifacts are called the stones of Olympus. Basically, they're magic rocks created by seven of the Olympians: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Demeter, Ares, and Hercules. They're meant to be some kind of energy reserve for them, just in case they need it."

"Is that all you saw?" asked Fury. "Is there anything else that you were shown?"

Naturally I lied, and said no in a calm and casual demeanor. Grant and Allyson on the other hand, were not so good at keeping things undercover. Grant's eyes darted left and right, plus he was really slow on saying no. Allyson looked straight at the table and shook her head. I don't know if they saw the same vision of me dying, but they did see something else, and by the looks of it, there visions weren't much better than mine's. Fury probably could have pushed us for answers, but seeing as he already got the info he initially wanted, he let it slide, and moved the conversation forward.

"Ok then," he said. "So, on to the million dollar question of why I brought three high school teens to the headquarters of the highest government agency in the world. Long story short, you three are going to be a temporary strike team we will use to obtain these stones, and keep them out of Doom's filthy mitts; whenever the EM sensor locates a stone, you three will drop down and pick it up for us."

He said it as if we didn't have a choice, that made me kind of mad.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You're gonna send three high schoolers, with little training, to go on a death match scavenger hunt against the world's worst villains?

"Basically," Fury. "Why is that a problem?"

"It might be for us, we could get hurt or something!"

"So far you've faced and army of robots, towers armed with laser cannons, and you've fought against at least three other metahumans. If it wasn't already clear enough, safety is not our first priority."

"Still, why didn't you send other heroes like Luke Cage, or Ms. Marvel, or anyone really?"

"You really think you three were my first choice?"

He pressed another button on his clicker, and the holographic TV reappeared. On screen were two diagrams of human body shapes. The one on the right had multicolored waves bouncing off it's insides, the other had some type of glowing aura around it.

"Believe me Mr. Fuller, three high school teens were not my first choice when choosing strike team members, but you are here for two reasons. Number one: the creepy psychic ladies told me that you were needed. Number two: according to this diagram, the stones have so much ethereal energy coursing through them, that if anyone who does not have proper immunity gets within 10 feet of them, the radiation will quickly infect their physical and psychological health in ways we do not know entirely."

"What do you mean by that?" Allyson asked Fury.

"Either something really good or really bad might happen to people who are exposed to the radiation." said Fury. "When Strange checked it out, he said that the magic was temperamental and fickle, as if it had a life of it's own. The magic could chose to grant the recipient eternal life, severe cancer, death by fire, superpowers, and the list goes on and on."

"So I assume the three of us have some sort of immunity or something?"

"You guessed it. In addition to your fantastic powers, each of you have an amazing level immunity to magic. Other than Dr. Strange himself, nobody can get as close to these stones as you can."

"So why not ask Dr. Strange to collect the stones?"

"He's busy at the moment, something about stopping an army of mystical demon warriors and dark mages from destroying the sun."

Allyson gulped heavily and sat back in her seat. Compared to losing the sun, I bet being used to collect magical radioactive rocks sounded pretty good to her.

Fury pressed a button on his clicker, and the TV went away.

"So are we all in agreement about the necessity for this task force?" he asked us.

We all nodded our heads and shrugged, it wasn't like we really had much of a choice anyway.

"Ok then," said Fury. "Before you can be officially named a team, I must first give you your individual evaluation scores, and I have to hear a psychological evaluation statement from your teachers/watchers."

"Uhh, psychological evaluation?" I asked Fury.

"Yeah, these people have carefully watched you three for the past three years. From personal daily behavior, interaction with other people, even things you did that you think nobody knew about; if you've done it, they know about it."

"What's the matter Jason?" Mrs. Kennedy asked me. "Afraid of the dirty little things that might come into light?"

I shrugged and tried to play it off, but in truth, that was exactly what I was afraid of. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't do drugs or anything illegal; except download free music, and even that's pretty much legal these days. No, what I was more concerned about, were the fights. On average, I got into about three fights per month, five if you really push me. If Fury was right, and Mrs. Kennedy knew everything i've done, I didn't stand the slightest chance of passing the psycho test.

"Alright then," said Fury. "We'll start with your individual examination scores, as well as total scores. Be mindful each of you need a B+ or higher to be cleared to be a part of this team. Allyson, based off of your performance yesterday, as well as the A you got on today's exam, you are qualified to join this team."

Allyson politely said thank you and kept quiet, although she couldn't hide that huge gleam in her eyes, as well as that enormous grin.

"Grant," Fury continued. "Based on your performance yesterday, plus the A you received on today's exam, your total grade is an A-, you are also qualified to join this team."

Grant breathed a sigh of relief, to be honest even I didn't know if he was gonna make the cut either; but I was super excited for him, it almost made this whole rock hunt thing worth it.

"Jason, based on your performance yesterday, plus the A you received on today's exam, your total grade is an A+, you are qualified to join the team."

Grant whooped really loud and clapped me on the shoulder. Normally, I would kick his head off, but considering the fact that he was just really excited, plus I couldn't kick his head off even if I wanted too, I dapped him up and smiled. Grant gave Allyson a big high five too.

"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, HAVE YOU ALL LOST YOUR BRAINS!?" Fury shouted.

"But I thought you said-" Grant stuttered.

"I said, that you had to get a B+ to be QUALIFIED to be on the team, you still have to get your psychological behavior report before you are officially on the team."

"Ohhhhhh…... well ok, then let's get that done."

"Mr. Lee, will you please give us Allyson's report?"

The Chinese guy straightened up, folded his hands together, and began to talk.

"Allyson is the most level headed, smart, sweet, and compassionate student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. She respects her elders, peers, and authority figures, without question or sarcasm. Even off campus, she shows compassion for others by volunteering for community service events, helping out at the animal shelter, and babysitting for busy parents, asking for nothing at all. As if she isn't already a shoe in, Allyson has never been suspended, expelled, or fought anyone on or off school grounds. The fact that she knows multiple martial arts styles, shows that she understands that violence is a tool to be used only for self-defense, but never out of vengeance. I strongly recommend that you recruit her for this task force Colonel Fury; it also wouldn't hurt to put her in charge."

I was already staring daggers at this guy, so my face didn't change much when he recommended that Allyson be leader of Delta Force (the name's catchy, just go with it for now). Don't get me wrong, being leader wasn't on the top of my priority list, but still, Allyson and Grant had elected me leader last night (I know, I sound like a major hypocrite considering the fact that I objected that decision), this Mr. Lee guy should watch himself.

"Thank you, Mr. Lee," said Fury. "Allyson, you are officially cleared to join this task force, welcome to Operation Triple X."

"Actually," said Grant. "We're calling it Delta Force, the name's way more catchy, although we're still on the fence about our official name."

Fury put his face in his palm, and shook his head. His expression was all too clear: _I just can't even right now with this guy_.

"Ok then," he sighed. "Delta Force it is. Coach Dawson, Grant's report if you will, and please don't leave anything out, I need a thorough read on this guy."

The coach straightened up and unfolded his arms.

"Grant is one of the most dedicated, and most trustworthy students I have ever known in my time as a high school coach. As a person, he likes to laugh and joke around a lot, but that's only a front that he puts on for other people. In truth, whenever it's time to get serious, Grant is the one that you'd want to watch your back. For the most part, he's pretty level-headed and calm. He's gotten into a few fights at school, but only when he was defending those who were getting bullied. On the team, he was always the anchor that kept the team grounded yet at the same time, he was the one that was always boosting everyone's morale. Even after he was publicly kicked off of the team, Grant took it like a man, and left with dignity, even though he could have gone out of control. I think that Grant would make a great addition to this team. His natural desire to do the very best that he can, plus his desire to defend his friends, or those that are weaker than him, will be a very big part in the team's success."

Fury thought on that for a while, and when I say a while, I mean he didn't speak for like thirty seconds.

"Grant," he finally said. "You are clear to join the task force, welcome to Opera-, I mean, welcome to Delta Force."

Grant pumped his fist and I gave him a fist bump on the shoulder.

"Now," said Fury. "Last, but not least, Mrs. Kennedy, will you please present Jason's report?"

Mrs. Kennedy sat up straight, took off her glasses and folded her hands. We were gonna be here for a while.

"For the two years that I have studied Jason, he has shown a vast amount of maturity, courtesy, and tolerance for his peers, as well as his teachers. But then again so does the upper 60 students of his graduating class. Much like Grant, Jason, has qualities underneath his social front that he tries to keep inside. Unfortunately, where Grant has positive aspects buried deep within, Jason is the opposite. He has an increased ego, and shows content for those who are less intelligent, or not as athletically gifted as he is. Jason shows courtesy towards his superiors, but that is not the same thing as showing respect. He has a smug attitude in all his classes, and feels that because he does better than most of his peers, he is vastly superior to them. On top of that Jason has inadequacy issues. I believe he tries so hard to look good in front of everyone, because he is trying to cope for the inner doubt and insecurities he holds inside. Up until yesterday, Jason has made almost no contact with other people in fact many at the school were afraid of him before his powers activated, imagine what they must be feeling now? Also, Jason is pretty much a thug in his own right. He has never been caught doing anything against school rules, and granted he has never broken a lot of school rules, except for the one that involves fighting. Jason more often than not reacts to confrontation with force, even when there are many other alternative options. Off and on campus, Jason has left a trail of blood so to speak. In fact-"

She pressed a button on her watch and the holographic TV popped up again. On the screen, were clips of me beating the living crap out of anyone that ever tried to mess with me. Bobby, Earl, Cody, Colton, John, Ethan, Devon, Ricardo, Cory, Jackson, yeah you get the point, I am a very violent kid.

"-In the past two years, Jason has got into twenty fights, broken twelve noses, given five people concussions, and has broken ten wooden chairs over people's heads. Due to the death of his parents at an early age, Jason has developed mental imbalances, and therefore is questionable as a person in general. As a team player, Jason is somewhat capable, but until yesterday, I had no idea that he could actually participate and cooperate with others. Whenever he has been on teams for recreational sports, he has only relied on himself, rarely trusting on others. This implies that he has trust issues, as well as hubris. He displays prowess in fighting, improvisation, and leadership, but I do not feel that it is enough to allow him to be a part of this task force. Colonel Fury, I would not recommend recruiting Jason for your strike team."

Everyone held their breath (told you she has a mouth on her) as Fury contemplated that mega lecture on my downfalls.

"Well, Jason," said Fury, who could probably hear the marching band that was my heart pounding away. "Do you have anything to say in your defense, before I make my final call?"

I didn't know why I was so nervous; this was a good thing. If I wasn't qualified to be on the team, then I could go home, I could be with my mom again. On the other hand, I'd have to leave Grant and Allyson, the only two friends I had ever had in a long time. I was definitely going to be expelled from school, so it's not like i'd be doing anything when I went home. Plus, I had this intense desire to see this thing through. I didn't want to be a hero, but I did want to help my friends; I had to get on this team. I didn't know why I wanted it so bad, but I knew in my heart that if I wasn't a part of this, it would haunt me forever.

"Well," I started. "Mrs. Kennedy is right about me always wanting to prove myself, but that's only because i'm really competitive, and I wanna be the best in everything I do. Yes I did get into a lot of fights over the years, but i've never started any of them, people just won't leave me alone no matter how hard I try not to get noticed."

"Yes, but that still doesn't change the fact that you always use force at the first chance you get, Jason," said Mrs. Kennedy.

"Oh, like they would really just let me walk away?"

"That's not the point, you could have at least tried to walk away."

"I still would have had to fight anyway, it was best to get it over with then."

"Why were you always assaulted Jason? Was it because you're a freak reject kid, with no parents and an old bat of a foster mother."

Everyone glanced nervously at one another, clearly this was not a part of the script. Allyson was looking over at me as if I were gonna explode, and to be honest she wasn't far off.

"Don't bring my mom into this, Mrs. Kennedy," I said struggling to keep my composure intact.

"Your FOSTER mother Jason, meaning fake, artificial, not genuine.

"Please stop it," I said now on the verge of losing it. "You're-"

"Telling everyone the truth; you will always be an outsider, not one single person will ever love you-"

Thunder boomed, and just under the ceiling, lightning flashed in a thunder cloud. I didn't mean to create it, but my powers did respond to emotion and right now I was seriously pissed off. I saw Fury's hand inch towards his holster, I wasn't concerned about that, if I wanted too, I could take it from him before he even knew it was gone.

"Go ahead," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Strike me with your lightning, prove to everyone just how unstable you are. It won't change anything, you'll always be a psychopath, never worth anything, completely-"

"ENOUGH!" Grant shouted as he bashed his fist on the table, shattering the glass completely.

I didn't know who was more surprised, me, Allyson, Fury, or the teacher's lounge.

"Just stop it," he continued. "He was just fine up until the moment when you started getting in his head. So what he has anger issues, in case you haven't realized, people get angry when they get picked on, which is probably not a good thing for you considering, we're all super powered stressed out teens, who are all capable of kicking your ass. You call him unstable because he lost his parents, but the truth is he handled it just the way anyone else would. I know i'd be devastated and angry if I lost my mom and dad, and especially at such a young age, but what have you done to help? By the sounds of it, all you've ever done is poke him with a stick, seeing how far you could push him; but when you push people, they push back. Yeah, he hasn't had friends until now, I can see that, but he is a good person at heart, and he needs to be on this team to help him grow as a person, just like me and Allyson. I tell you what Fury, you may not think he's ready, but this guy pulled this team together, and because of him, we were able to take down an army of robots big and small. Also, no disrespect to you Mr. Lee, but we already have a leader and it's this guy right here with the dreads; if he's not on this team, then I quit. Oh but wait a minute, you can't keep him off the team can you Fury? The Norn-Fates chose ALL of us, he's got an iron clad contract whether you like it or not. Your move bro."

At this point the silence in the room took a voice of it's own and it was saying: Holy $#!* dude. In that moment I realized just how awesome of a friend Grant really was. He saw all of the evidence pointing to the fact that I was a juvenile delinquent, and still here he was defending me, risking his spot on the team so that I could get the shot he thought I deserved. The guy was an absolute idiot for taking the risk, but I made a mental note to thank him tenfold for what he just did for me.

"Ms. Grace?" asked Fury. "Is it true that you voted Jason as leader of your team?"

"Yeah that's true," she quickly said, but something was off about her voice. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she was simply acknowledging her decision, not standing by it.

Fury thought on that for a moment; clearly this could go either way.

"Well Jason," said Fury. "You've put me in a very difficult position here. Your results from your training sessions say one thing, your track record says another, and at the same time, you've still somehow managed to win over your fellow peers; by the way, nice speech, Grant, if you don't make it as a pro football player, you'll make one hell of a lawyer. Tell you what, Jason, i'll put you on a leash, not literally, and let you out for a test run. When we locate a stone you'll be able to participate on the team, and based on your performance, we'll see whether or not your membership will be permanent."

That sly silver tongue devil. Fury somehow gave everybody what they wanted. The teachers got the doubtful response they so desperately wanted. Grant and Allyson got me as a teammate, and as for me, this was a bittersweet thing. Yeah, I was stoked to be on the team, but now this meant it'd be way longer before I could go home. I hoped we were gonna find these stones fast.

As if on cue, a holographic image popped up, showing a red blinking sonar deep in the middle of the South American Amazon. Fury tried to hide it but I saw the lump of fear he swallowed down. So much for the vote of confidence, if this was our first mission, Fury was just as doubtful as we all were.

"Time to put Delta Force to the test," he said. "The EM sensor has just picked up a huge arcane energy signature in the Amazons, and guess who's going to go get it?"

Nobody answered that question, it was pretty rhetorical.

"Alright then, let's get you all suited up,"

He pressed a button on his clicker (I was starting to get sick of that thing), and we were all teleported into another room. This room had another identical glass table in the center of the room; if Grant didn't get mad again, it just might survive. In the background were three tubes that had light bulbs in them. Inside the tubes, were these awesome looking black battle suits, that looked like a mix between Kevlar and metal armor. Each suit had a S.H.I.E.L.D. symbol on the shoulders. One had green, another was, blue, and the one that was shaped for a girl, had a yellow on it. We all sat down across the table, and a holographic tube popped up in the middle of the table.

"So," Fury started. "Because we actually do realize that you are nothing more than mutant teens with not much formal training, and because we actually would like it if you came back to this Helicarrier in one piece, we have taken it upon ourselves to equip you with some gear; consider it an early Christmas present."

Yeah, because a government battlesuit was on the tippy top of my wish list.

"Mrs. Kennedy, would you please quickly explain how each battlesuit works for our three young heroes."

"It'd be my pleasure Colonel," she said as she pulled out her clicker, and pushed a button.

On the holographic tube, the three battle suits popped up and slowly spun around as Mrs. Kennedy talked.

"Each of your battle suits have an under layer of special Kevlar that can easily protect you from buck shots. The outer, more armored parts are a mixture of tempered iron, steel, and titanium. The metals were mixed together with unstable molecules, so they will be able to protect you from basic forms of damage such as knives, gunfire, and brute force. However, the metal offers little protection against other metals such as: Adamantium, Vibranium, Uru, and enchanted metals."

She pressed another button and the two male suits were shunted off to the side, leaving Allyson's one (who else would it belong too?) as the main focus.

"Ms. Grace," Mrs. Kennedy continued. "Your Kevlar under armor is also engineered to increase the amount of solar energy you absorb by 70%, while you're wearing it, you can put more energy into your attacks without fear of losing energy."

"Well actually," said Allyson. "My body naturally absorbs enough energy per day that potentially could wipe out New York City. Assuming I ever used my powers for one hour straight without stopping, it would only take me another two hours to get the energy back. So, considering the fact that I haven't really used my powers a lot until I came here, I have and almost unlimited source of energy, plus if I ever ran low, I could just will my body to absorb more solar energy, so while the thought is appreciated and gratefully accepted, it's highly unnecessary."

Mrs. Kennedy, who was secretly miffed, pressed another button, and the arms of the suit suddenly had some type of golden metal arm covering that had ends shaped like taser points.

"These are your solar shields," she said. "These are made of pure gold mixed with mirror amplifier technology. Besides, being great for blocking melee attacks, these shields will amplify your energy blasts by ten and allow for better accuracy on tighter shots and targets; before you say that you don't need them, just please don't you never know."

She pressed another button on her clicker and some type of black liquid covered Allyson's hands. Before any of us had time to freak out, the liquid hardened into gloves, and two wicked sharp knives suddenly into Allyson's hands. She twirled them with ease, and I got the feeling that she had handled weapons before.

"Whoa," she said. "They feel like they're vibrating."

"That's the residual feedback from the gloves interacting with the knives," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Based off of your martial arts background, we felt that knives would be good, basic weapons for you to use. However, if you think it, the knives can convert to full length swords; go ahead try it out."

Allyson looked at her knives with a quizzical look and they immediately elongated into three foot long blades. I didn't know if they were supposed to do this but her swords flashed with a wave of golden light as they transformed. Again, Allyson easily twirled the blades through her hands and even stabbed at open air a few times. Call me crazy, but she seemed like she could beat me in a duel. Assuming we got back alive with all of our limbs intact, i'd have to put that to the test.

"One more thing, Allyson," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your blades can also convert into a double edged spear, connect them at the ends, and imagine them growing into a spear."

Allyson connected the blades at their ends, which gave off some type of power discharge when they interacted. Her face morphed for a second in concentration, and a 6 foot long double edged spear burst out. The only bad thing was that Allyson had her blade pointed horizontally when she busted out her spear, meaning Grant and I were gonna get to know Allyson's spear in a way we really didn't want to. Luckily for me, my Speed Mode kicked in the way it always does when i'm in point blank danger. I saw the spear burst, out which was fast even by my standards. I quickly, backed up against my chair, dodging the blade by a few inches; Grant wasn't as quick. The blade swept across his chest tearing his workout shirt, but that wasn't the worst thing. Grant screamed: YEOWCH!, something I never thought would come out of his mouth. More so, a thick line of blood was streaming down his chest. My eyes went wide, I should do something, I should help him, but I was way too stunned to do anything; yesterday I saw Grant take a pounding from an army of robots, go toe-to-toe with Ms. Marvel, and not get so much as a bruise, Yet here he was, bleeding out like a stuck pig. Allyson started panicking immediately, and Grant kept saying: _Oh God, Oh, God, Oh, God!_

"Wait," he finally said. "You're sun powers, do a jingle, sing something, anything."

Allyson cupped her hands over her mouth, sung a few notes, and her hands started to glow. She wiped her hands across the length of Grant's cut and it healed in no time; looked like a fleshy version of a zipper to be honest. After the hysteria of Mr. Invincible being vincible, Grant asked the question we all wanted to know.

"What in the heck is that thing made of?" he asked Mrs. Kennedy.

"Well," she started. "It's alloy metal, made of both Vibranium and Adamantium, fused with unstable molecules and Pym Particles, so that it is able to change shape and form."

"Adamantium." said Grant. "That's what Wolverine's claws are made of.

"Yeah," I said. "And Vibranium is what Captain America's shield is made of, guess we know what can hurt you now huh buddy?"

Grant's face went distant for a moment, like he was having a flashback or something, but quick as it came, it left, and Grant put on his brave face.

"Well, you can't win em' all man, besides not too many people have access to that stuff right? I should be fine for a while, although I will have to practice with my sword skills more, just to be safe huh?"

Leave it to this guy to be able to completely bounce back after being opened up like a dissection animal. I could tell he was pretty racked by that experience, but he still put on a brave face for the sake of the team; what an idiot. I gave him a fist bump, promised to give him a few pointers, and then let Mrs. Kennedy finish explaining the gear that would most likely save us from being killed.

"Moving on," she said. "Oh, and for future reference, please point your weapons away from each other when they transform, I really don't want to deal with the paperwork that's involved with work related deaths."

Grant and I lightly chuckled, but Allyson was still as stiff as a board.

"Hey, Sunbird?" Grant asked in a concerned voice. "You alright?"

"I could have killed you," she barely whispered the way she does when she's recovering from something.

"It's ok Allyson," Grant responded. "You didn't mean it, you didn't know, i'm fine, Jason's fine, it was just a freak thing, don't beat yourself up for it."

Allyson looked straight at Mrs. Kennedy.

"We're gonna have to kill people, aren't we?" she asked her, nearly on the verge of tears.

Breaking News everyone: Mrs. Kennedy actually has a heart that can feel emotions and stuff. Her cold hearted teacher demeanor broke for a moment, before she recomposed herself and responded to Allyson."

"To be honest, Ms. Grace," she said. "I really don't know. You're dealing with mystical objects, so you may encounter things such as monsters, and mystical evil beings, but if the time comes, you have to be ready to defend yourself; and before you condemn yourself for it, remember that your enemy won't feel remorse for your death."

By the looks of it, that didn't make Allyson feel any better but in truth, Mrs. Kennedy was right. Personally, I wasn't too stoked on the idea of gutting someone with a spear, but I did understand survival, and sometimes you have to do things that you'll lose a bit of sleep over, to ensure that you live to see the next day. Basically, if the time came, I would do what I had to do to protect me and my friends.

Mrs. Kennedy pressed another button on her clicker, and the suit with the green S.H.I.E.L.D. logos on the shoulders became the focus of the projection.

"This suit belongs to you, Grant," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your Kevlar under layer is lined with X-Gene hormone growth, it will double your current strength, speed, and stamina."

"Wait a minute," said Grant. "You rigged my suit with mutant steroids? Isn't that illegal, and more importantly, unhealthy."

"Well as far as illegal goes, technically no, as for unhealthy, no. The hormone growth only slightly enhances your abilities, without expanding them to the point to where it will cause any damage to your body; don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe."

"Oh, well that's ok then; please continue explaining the awesomeness of my battle suit."

"Well sorry to say kid, but that's it, your outer armor is the same as Allyson's and Jason's, but you do get a nice shiny battle axe to go with it."

She pressed another button on her clicker, and the same liquid black stuff covered Grant's hands, solidified into gloves, and a brand new wicked sharp double-bladed axe flashed into his hands. It was about 5 feet long and medieval looking, the thing had to weigh at least 100 pounds, yet Grant was twisting and turning it like it was lighter than a feather. Something seemed off about him though, he was looking at the axe like he had seen it before, like it was a something pulled out of a bad memory.

"Ummm, just for the record," he said. "Is this axe, you know-"

"Made of Adamantium and Vibranium? Yes it is Grant. If you're not careful, this axe could potentially kill you, so I suggest you practice with it as often as you can. Speaking of which, you're axe has a boomerang function to it, if you throw it, it will come back, and the handle will land exactly right in your hand. You don't have to worry about getting skewered with your own axe when it rebounds; go ahead and try it out."

I could tell Grant wasn't too confident about the thought of an axe-erang that could lob his head off, but he bravely gave it a go. He threw the axe straight up, I got out of my seat and moved a little more to the right, and when the axe came down, Grant reached for it, and it landed perfectly in his hand. He tried it out a few more times, throwing it farther and in different directions, and the axe still landed perfectly in his hand every time. Pretty soon, Grant forgot all about the danger of it, and started to have fun with it.

"Your axe can also be controlled remotely by your hand movements," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your gloves and the axe handle share a unique frequency, that allows it to return home after it is thrown. While in the air, your axe switches to remote control mode."

She pressed another button on her clicker and three holographic targets popped up high in the air, one in a far corner, another directly above the table, and another directly to the right side of the table; thankfully, not near me.

"Whenever you're ready," Mrs. Kennedy told Grant.

Grant threw his axe as hard as he could at the target on the far corner. Once it was hit, Grant thrusted his arm at the one directly above the table. Although he did hit the target, the axe almost broke the table. Luckily, at the last second, Grant pushed his palm upward, like he was playing volleyball and the axe just barely avoided crash landing. Finally Grant shot his arm to the right, almost taking my head off, and the axe flew towards the last target, taking it out. Grant then, held out his hand and the axe flew back into his palm.

"Dude that was totally sweet!" he nearly shouted. "Can I fling it around the way Thor does, can I summon lightning with it?"

That question was so bad, even I had to facepalm him.

"Grant," said Mrs. Kennedy the way she does when she's talking to idiots. "No, you cannot swing it around the way Thor does and no, you cannot summon lightning with it. Your axe can convert into a spear though, go ahead and try it out."

Grant did the smart thing for once, and lifted the axe horizontally over his head before thinking about the spear. Immediately, the axe elongated. It was still roughly in the shape of an axe, but it was attached to a six foot tall pole that had a shoe sized blade for the butt of the spear. Grant rotated it around a bit, got up out of his seat, and swung it around at a safe distance. He then walked back to the table and sat down, obviously, impressed with his new weapon.

"Your spear also has the throwing/returning function, no not in here, now switch it back to axe mode and let's move on."

Grant looked a little bummed out, but switched the spear back to an axe. Mrs. Kennedy pressed another button on the clicker and the suit with the blue S.H.I.E.L.D. logos on the shoulders popped up (guess which one this one belonged to?).

"And now," said Mrs. Kennedy. ""It is with my deepest regret that I explain how your suit works, Jason."

"Aww," I sarcastically said. "Mrs. Kennedy, you're gonna make me blush."

"Humph, cute. Your Kevlar suit is designed to absorb and amplify personal static electricity. On average you'll have about 1000 volts traveling through your body per second, you won't have to worry about energy availability while wearing the suit. Your Kevlar is also specially synchronized with your outer armor; your armor will be able to effectively protect you in combat and at the same time, is lighter than anything you've ever worn in your life. Your battle suit is also designed to be friction resistant, you'll be able to run much faster without regular clothing holding you back."

"Ok I am really not getting the whole, 'let's give Grant the worst suit business', said Grant. Poor guy, as whiny as he was, he did have a point; compared to the other suits, his was pretty basic and plain.

"Get over yourself kid," said Mrs. Kennedy. "You can fly, you have super strength, and now you have a battle axe, try and be a little more appreciative. Moving on, Jason, your suit has special lightning enhancers."

She pressed another button and the same type of arm shield that were on Allyson's suit popped up on mine too except mine's were silver.

"Like Allyson's these shields will amplify and focus your lightning bolts, making them a lot more powerful and accurate."

She pressed another button and my hands were covered in black liquid that hardened into gloves. Just in case you're wondering, it felt like cool play dough covering my hands and when they hardened, the gloves seemed to be giving off powerful electricity, I could feel the voltage powering me up, and I could only imagine how much power the entire suit was gonna give me. A second later, a 3 foot long sword with a curved hilt, just like the one I had always practiced with in my duels with Nightcrawler, appeared in my hand. Allyson was right, the blade was vibrating ever so lightly, it was as if the gloves turned it's hidden features on and without them, the blade would just be that, an ordinary blade.

"Of course, your blade is made of Adamantium and Vibranium," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your blade can also transform into a spear as well, no not now, we don't have time right now, we have to move on. Oh and I almost forgot, you're suit has a shield, as in like a Captain America type one that springs out of your left arm on your battle suit. Nightcrawler said he will train you in sword and shield combat in your free time, now let's move on to your battle suit activators."

She pressed another button on her clicker and our gloves and weapons flashed away. A second later, our watches started blinking and when I looked at it, the screen said: Download Complete. The suits in the tubes suddenly flashed and disappeared; I got the feeling that they were closer than I thought.

"You're battle suits have been transformed into digital data that, upon activation will rematerialize and be equipped to your bodies." said Mrs. Kennedy. "In order to activate your battle suit all you have to do is press the red button on your watch, and speak two voice recognition protocol security measures; let's set them now.

Allyson, Grant, and I pressed the red button on our watches.

"Your first voice recognition security measure is your activation code. I suggest something like, battle suit activate, battle suit power up or-,"

"IT'S MORPHIN TIME!" Grant screamed into his watch.

Apparently, the first code was standard issue for all of our watches because all three watches bleeped and in a voice similar to Siri, they said: "Voice Recognition Code, _It's morphin time,_ accepted." Everyone went silent for a moment, and then Grant and I busted out laughing hysterically. Fury, Mrs. Kennedy, even Allyson, hit us with a face palm; but it was still funny, I mean seriously, how great was it's morphin time?

"Well, that'll work too" said Mrs. Kennedy in a voice that clearly said we were beyond understanding. "Now, the second voice recognition code will be your code names, we've chosen some for you, but by the sounds of it, you've already done that, so go nuts."

"Um, one question," said Grant. "Can we change activation codes if we feel like it?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Just press the green button, enter previous codes, and you can choose a new one, why do you ask? Morphin time, not sounding so good anymore?"

"No, it's not that, it's just that Jason and I have temporary code names for now, but when we do find our true name, I wanna be able to change it to my morpher."

"It's not a morpher you idiot, it's voice activated battle suit materializer."

"So it's not a morpher, it's just….. a morpher."

"He's got a point," I said. "Not much difference between what you said, and what he did."

Mrs. Kennedy shook her head and looked at Allyson. I don't know when this happened, but apparently Allyson was pretty much votes as the voice of reason on this team. She was, but still, not cool.

"Don't look at me," said Allyson. "I've given up on them too. Although they are technically right, it basically is a morpher."

Mrs. Kennedy didn't even bother to face palm, she had no support anymore.

"Just enter your code names," she said. "Press the red button again, and just say whatever they are."

Allyson pressed the button on her morpher first.

"Sunbird." she said.

Grant went next.

"Super-G."

"Super-G?" asked Fury, who I almost forgot was there.

"Yeah," said Grant. I know it's not the best name but it's a work in progress."

"Got that right, keep working on it, Super-G is ok, but you can do better."

I went last

"Thunder Man,"

"Also needs work," said Fury.

"Now that all of that is taken care of," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Time for you to go. You'll be escorted to a sonic jet on the top deck, and will be flown to the Amazon, good luck, don't die, and hopefully, i'll see you later."

We all stood up, and moved a few feet away from the table.

"Ready for this you guys?" asked Grant.

"Let's find out," I said.

"Wanna call it, leader has to call the first morph."

I chuckled and said yes.

"READY?!" I shouted.

"READY!" Grant and Allyson shouted back.

We all pressed our red buttons

"IT'S MORPHIN TIME!" we all shouted.

"SUNBIRD!"

"SUPER-G!"

"THUNDER MAN! "

My body was engulfed in a flash of light, and I felt the cool black liquid surround my entire body. I felt an intense surge of electricity, and when I looked down, I was wearing an awesome battle suit. Mrs. Kennedy was right, I could feel the voltage traveling from the suit to my body; with this much power flowing through me, I felt unstoppable. I looked over at Grant and Allyson who were also looking great. Grant was flexing his arms, and Allyson was doing that thing you do when your hands feel weird, and you keep looking at them.

"Whoa!" said Grant. "I feel good, and you guys look great!"

"You too bro," I said. "Allyson, how you feeling?"

"Pretty awesome," she said, but there was still something off about her, something that had to do with me.

After we morphed, my friends and I were flashed to the top deck of the Helicarrier. The sudden change from darkness to light was so intense, that I was temporarily blinded. Once I got my bearings again, I saw that we were really outside, on a flying Helicarrier, at least 30,000 feet in the air. This was a little frightening, but compared to what i'd been through in the last two days, I quickly recovered. Some guy in an orange traffic vest, named Bob, was waiting for us and instructed us to follow him. We walked until we reached the last ship at the edge of the Helicarrier, which also made me nervous, considering I was the only member of the team that couldn't fly. The plane was dark black, big enough to transport probably six people, and had huge thrusters on the back; I could tell it wouldn't be too long until we got to the Amazon. Bob pressed a button on his wristwatch, the plane opened up, and a stairwell shot down. Grant immediately called shotgun and ran all super fast to the front of the ship, leaving Allyson and I to sit in the back. We strapped our seat belts on, and the pilot drove the jet down the runway, and prepared for take off.

"You okay?" I asked Allyson.

"Mm hmm," she nodded.

"You ready for this?"

She shrugged her shoulders. At this point, I knew there was a really big elephant in the room, so I decided to go out on a limb and acknowledge it.

"Ok," I said to her. "What's up with you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked me coldly, not even bothering to look at me.

"I mean today, we were cool, but all of a sudden you're acting like I slapped your grandmother, what's up?"

She turned her head and looked at me, her piercing brown eyes, filled with a quiet anger and disappointment. It was almost hard to look her in the eye.

"Honestly, Jason," she started. "You are just unbelievable."

"Meaning?"

"You're way too violent, and to be honest, you have way too much rage in your heart for me to actually trust you."

I couldn't believe it, last night Allyson was raving on about how much of a hero I was, and now here she was saying that I was an uncontrollable rageaholic.

"Is this about all the fights?" I asked her. "Look, if it's about that you gotta understand that-"

"I UNDERSTAND," she interrupted. "That all you ever do is fight, that's all you know, that's the only thing you revert to when you meet confrontation; fight,fight,fight."

"Look, I know what I did in the past was pretty bad, but I am trying to be a better person. I'm not really the violent person you've seen, that was all survival, I did that stuff so it wouldn't happen to me."

"For survival?! Do you…I mean…. do you know what you did to Quicksilver?"

So that was his name; kinda cool.

"Ok yes, I know I blasted him with a lot more power than needed, but I was just so-

"Angry? Jason, you blasted him through more than ten walls. I don't know how he ended up on the floor again but I saw the sky through all the wreckage; you blasted him out of the Helicarrier. When I screamed it wasn't because you hurt me or anything, although that could have happened, no it was because Quicksilver's skin was burnt and blistered beyond normal repair. His heart rate was so slow; you almost killed him Jason, in a training fight. I barely managed to bring him back, and he still needs a few days in the infirmary."

"I'm sorry Allyson, I didn't mean to hurt him so bad, I just didn't know how strong that thunderbolt was, how much energy I actually put into it."

"Exactly, I know it was an accident, but as strong as you are, you can't afford accidents, you've nearly killed three people already, I don't know if I can trust you anymore. I'll follow you into battle, and I won't question your orders or your ability to lead this team, but you and I...whatever we…..I just can't with you Jason."

Quick question how many of you have been Friend Zoned (all of should be saying yes, don't lie, it happens to the best of us.)? Well believe it or not, this was my first time. I haven't really pursued anyone, so I didn't have the opportunity to be Friend Zoned, which sucked even more considering the fact that I wasn't even pursuing Allyson, or at least not consciously.

"Fine," I said. "I'll just leave you to your thoughts then, Sunbird."

She nodded, and leaned her head against the widow. A minute later, the jet took off; after we got a considerable ways away from the Helicarrier, the pilot ordered us to brace ourselves, and a second later, the jet hit speeds so high, even I was impressed.


	8. Chapter 8: Rumble Agianst The Jungle

**Chapter 8:Rumble Against The Jungle**

12:00 P.M. December 13, 2014, en route to South America

Here's some free advice. If you ever need to get over a major disappointment, try flying in a jet that can move at 3x the speed of sound; it's a real pick-me-up. I don't know how I knew this, but I could just feel how fast the jet was going, as in, it was like a second nature thing. This jet was going at 2,310 mph exactly, I didn't even know how that was possible. At this speed, assuming we had departed somewhere from New York, we would arrive at the Amazon in around 20 minutes. The sheer novelty of being in a machine that could move as fast as I could, was awesome. Even better, were the reactions from Grant and Allyson. You see, because I have super speed as a power, in one day, i've pretty much grown used to this type of speed, so even though the ride was exhilarating, it wasn't mind blowing. Grant and Allyson on the other hand, were flipping $#!+. Grant was screaming so loud, he reminded me of Joe Swanson, from Family Guy. Allyson was screaming her head off too, but she was laughing hysterically at the same time. The sound of it made my unbelievably conflicted. On one hand, I loved her laugh. It was warm, kind, and full of energy. On the other hand, Allyson hated me now, and I couldn't allow myself to enjoy certain awesome qualities about her; so basically everything. Anyway, after 25 minutes of flying, the pilot said over the intercom that we were approaching the edge of the Amazon. Unfortunately, because the arcane field was so wide, he could only bring us this far, and that we would be dropped from the jet immediately. Before I had time to try and tell him that some of us don't do flying solo, I felt my seat being swiftly pulled out from under me, and I fell through the floor of the jet.

Yeah I won't lie to you, I screamed and cussed like a little baby pee pants. As soon as I dropped through the jet, everything went crazy. I couldn't get my bearings, I was constantly off balance, and I had no idea where Grant and Allyson were. Before I had time to try and adjust my situation, I felt Grant grab me by my waist and rearrange me until I was in a standing up position. Normally speaking, this would be a very emasculating thing, but considering the fact that I was on a free fall course to splatsville, I didn't complain. Grant flew me safely to the ground, and Allyson landed shortly afterwards. A few seconds later, our watches started bleeping. I pressed the black button, and Fury spoke through the communicator.

"All of you, press the blue buttons on your watches," he said.

I don't know why he wanted us to do it, but I had high hopes. Maybe it was a weapon upgrade, or an armor boost, or something even more awesome. We pressed our blue buttons, and instead of gear upgrades, a sharp, excruciating pain shot through my head. It was as if someone had shot a spear through my head, and was weaving my brain onto some kind of keychain; if I had enough brain power to go around, I probably would have screamed. After a while the pain subsided.

"_Man that was brutal," _said Grant.

_Sure was,_ I thought to myself.

"Whoa, how'd you do that?" Grant asked me.

"How'd I do what?"

"I heard your voice in my head, bro,"

"Really, how?"

My communicator buzzed.

"The blue button released a small dosage of shared psychic energy between the three of you," said Fury. "You can now communicate with each other telepathically, it'll save time in battle, and keep your enemies in the dark about your next moves."

We tried this out for a few seconds, telling each other hi, and saying random stuff to each other in mind speak. After we got used to that, we turned, and faced the edge of the Brazilian Amazon. To be honest i'm not much for nature stuff, but even I could appreciate the sheer size of the Amazon. From left to right it was nothing but lush green foliage, and this was only the perimeter, the real beauty was inside the vast expanse of trees, vines and other stuff.

"_How are we supposed to find a single rock in this giant forest?" _I thought_._

"_Dunno," _Grant thought to me_. "Let's find out,"_

He sprinted into the forest in super speed, leaving Allyson and I to follow after him.

Grant and I made sure to only go fast enough so that we were making good time, but slow enough so that Allyson could keep up overhead; so we were only going at 150 mph. We ran for like 5 minutes running through narrow paths, weaving through trees and vines, and occasionally ducking or jumping over logs. Now I know you're probably wondering how we were going to find the stone, even with our super speed. The truth is, as soon as we crossed into the Amazon, I felt this intense surge of aggression and rage, I just wanted to blast everything around me to dust. The deeper we went into the Amazon, the more those feelings increased, in fact, I had to stay completely focused on the task at hand so I wouldn't end up attacking Grant or Allyson (Allyson especially). Also, I could feel that this aura came from one source in particular, like a homing beacon. When we turned certain directions, or went in certain angles, the energy source felt either farther, or off course. So how was I going to find the stone? I was gonna follow my inner tracker sense, and hope for the best. At first, I thought this was gonna be pretty easy. My homing beacon would lock on to the source, we would get there in around thirty minutes, and we could head back to the Helicarrier lickity split. That was before my Speed Sense (that thing that happens when time suddenly gets really slow when i'm in danger) kicked in.

To the right of Grant, I saw a massive animal-like creature suddenly charge at full force. More so, that thing was on a collision course with Grant, who was completely unaware.

"_GRANT, JUMP NOW!" _I mentally screamed in his head.

Thankfully, Grant listened to my random emergency call, and jumped sky high, before the creature could trample him; although it did take out two trees, before stopping and turning around to face me and Allyson. I was expecting something like a bear, or a rhino, or something realistic; this thing did not fit any of those descriptions in any way. The creature was a giant bull, or at least it was shaped like a bull. I say that, because the creature was made completely of plant life. It was extremely massive, the size of a school bus, and made mostly of tree bark, although it did have vines weaving in and out of it's body structure, like veins. Its horns and hooves were made of some type of black rock, that I assume was obsidian, and they were sharper than knives. As if this wasn't bad enough, the bull was quite literally glowing with red energy. Its veins were coursing with the stuff, when it snorted, red fire burst from it's nose, and it's eyes were glowing like red hot ingots. Looking into it's eyes, I could tell that this beast had no sense of intelligence whatsoever. All it knew was rage, hate, and destruction. There would be no reasoning with it, no calming it down, either we had to destroy it, or it would destroy us. The bull stared straight at me, doing that thing bulls do when they're about to charge. I figured if nobody made any sudden movements, I could blast it would a super powerful bolt of lightning, turn it to tinder, and move on my way. Then Grant landed on the ground, created a big crater, and startled the bull into charging.

Naturally, the bull completely ignored the super strong, almost invulnerable, football jock falling out of the sky, and charged straight at me. My Speed Sense kicked in, and right before the bull hit me, I backflipped over it (no that was not necessary), and it crashed into another few trees. I didn't anticipate it getting up so fast, because when my Speed Sense kicked in, the bull was already touching me. Lucky for me, I quickly recovered, rolled along the length of its back, and landed in a crouching stance. Again, the bull charged at me (this thing must have really hated me.), but this time I had something special for him.

"_GRANT, TAKE IT DOWN!" _I mentally shouted.

The bull was completely surprised when a super powered football jock slammed into it with the force of a truck. Grant and the bull tumbled in a power struggle for a few seconds before Grant got on his feet, and started clobbering the bull. He hit it with a powerful right punch followed by a brutal uppercut, and an awesome drop kick, sending the bull crashing through other trees. At first I thought the bull was history. I mean seriously, what could survive that kind of attack? Apparently, a magical bull made of tree parts could, because it was charging at us with a vengeance.

"_Guys, get clear," _Grant thought to me and Allyson.

We did as he said, and rolled out of the way. Once we were clear, Grant intercepted the bull, grabbed it by the horns, and after a few seconds, managed to use it's momentum against it to lift it in the air, and smash it to the ground. Grant didn't let go of the horns, and body slammed the bull two more times, before spinning it around in a circle multiple times, and launching it straight into the air.

"All yours bro!" he said aloud.

"_Allyson," _I thought to her. "_Shields out, were gonna blast it to bits."_

True to her word, Allyson didn't question my orders, and activated her sun shields. At this point, I realized this whole armor business thing was directly related to thought. As long as we thought what we wanted the suit to do, it would do it for us. Anyway, we busted our shields out, took aim, and unleashed two powerful bolts of thunder and light. Mrs. Kennedy was right, these shields were great for focused shots. Now to be fair, I could have hit the bull on my own but the shields did help focus my lightning bolts. Furthermore, the shields definitely enhanced the power of my thunder; as the power coursed through my arms, my shields surged like crazy, and the result was a lightning blast as big as a school bus; the same could be said for Allyson's sun bolt. Anyway, our blasts hit the bull with some serious force, I didn't exactly see what happened to it, but it had to have vaporized on the spot after a hit like that. A flaming blob of bark fell to the ground, making a huge crater a few feet from where me and Allyson were standing; that thing had to be totally dead at this point.

My Speed Sense kicked in so fast, it completely caught me off guard.

Out of the giant crater, the bull was charging straight at me and Allyson. The thing was smoking, and had holes in most of it's body. One of it's horns was broken, and one of it's eyes were blown out, but it was still very much alive, and very, very, pissed off. Even with my speed, I shouldn't have been able to avoid it. I was too close, and it was charging way too fast, but like I said, my Speed Sense really kicked into gear. The good news was, I managed to tackle Allyson, and we both shot out of the way, avoiding the bull by an inch, as it crashed deep into some other trees (just for the record, a lot of trees will get hurt in this chapter). The bad news? I was seriously out of it. My Speed Sense really did kick into gear, but unfortunately, that little stunt had some side effects. I was seriously nauseous, way too dizzy to get up, and I felt like I was gonna puke. Also, I realized that I had probably tackled Allyson way too hard, because she was still on the ground groaning. Even worse, I could hear the bull coming back, ready to trample us. I tried to get up, but my body wouldn't allow it, oh and just because life wanted to be a total dick to me, my vision was restored just in time to see me get steamrolled by plant made livestock. Again, Grant intercepted the bull just in time, and saved our butts. He grabbed it by the face, used it's momentum against it again, and threw it far into a cluster of trees.

"_Thunder Man!" _Grant thought to me_. "Help me get rid of this thing!"_

He super sprinted in the direction of the bull, leaving me behind. Now, I was feeling better, but I was still out of it. I needed to heal, fast. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the voltage constantly flowing through me. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I willed the voltage to flow through me, and fix it. I suddenly felt a large surge of voltage surge through my head, and when it died down, I felt better, faster even. I raced after Grant, and found him smashing away at the bull. Grant was doing a good job fighting the beast, but obviously, we needed a new plan of attack. Blasting and hitting it were somewhat effective, but ultimately, it wasn't getting the job done.

"_Grant," _I thought to him_. "Try and knock it back a little more, we need to regroup and rethink our strategy."_

"_Gotcha," _he thought to me before grabbing the bull by its horns, and kicking it hard in the snout, sending it soaring backwards.

"Ok dude," I said while running towards him. "Blasting and crushing isn't working, this thing is a trooper, we need to take it out where it counts."

Now under the current circumstances, having a chat with my buddy wasn't all too smart, but like me, Grant had super speed, which meant that we could talk in Speed Mode. Now Grant wasn't as fast as me, but he was fast enough to stack up to my terms. On the speed charts I was a solid 10, he was an 8.5 and rising. Anyway, Grant and I were talking super fast, saying entire sentences every second. The bull was up and charging, but it was moving at the speed of a glacier; we had plenty of time.

"Well, then let's try slashing and hacking," said Grant as he summoned his axe.

"Great idea," I said summoning my sword. "Take out the right legs, i'll do the same on the left, then we'll give it a final strike together."

We looked in the direction of the bull, who was now several feet away from us, and charged at it. To be honest, if i'd known it would have been this easy, I would have told the team to bust out the weapons from the beginning. Grant and I rushed at the bull, and right before impact, I crouched to the side, and slashed it's left front and hind legs out from under it, like they were made of wet paper. Grant did the same, and we both shifted out of Speed Mode letting the bull crash into a large tree. I almost felt sorry for the thing, now that it was so defenseless, but not sorry enough to where I let it live. I channeled a lot of voltage through my sword and stuck it in the side while Grant simultaneously decapitated it. The bull dissolved into a pile of mulch, topped with a large obsidian horn.

"Tell me it wasn't that easy all along," said Grant.

"Afraid so man," I responded. "Hey, lesson learned right? Come on, we have to regroup with Sunbird."

We dashed back to our original spot, and found Allyson waiting for us, with a very pissed off look on her face.

"You alright?" I asked her.

"You tackled me into the ground, ran off to fight a tree bull, and left me to die; screw off," she snapped.

"That's one way to thank me for saving your life," I responded.

"Don't you turn this around on me you-"

"_WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH YOU TWO!?" _Grant mentally shouted in our heads, causing us to stop in our tracks.

"_Look, just whatever it is, please let's just pull together, we can't find the stone if we kill each other first."_

"_Well maybe next time," _thought Allyson_. "You two won't run off and leave me behind again."_

"_We're sorry about that Sunbird, we just saw an opportunity, and we took it. But you are right, that's no excuse for leaving a teammate behind, it won't happen again. Right Thunder-Man?"_

"_Of course not." _I thought to them.

Allyson's glare slowly melted like an ice cube, and she nodded with a bashful smile on her face. Grant was really good at this stuff.

"_Ok then," _she thought to us_. "So what's the plan now?"_

Grant and Allyson looked at me expectantly.

"_We keep going forward." _I told them. "_If it wasn't clear beforehand, it's pretty obvious that we're after the stone of Ares, and it is seriously bonding with the environment. We should be on guard for more attacks from mother nature; the closer we get, the worse it'll probably be, so let's be on our A game, ok?"_

Grant and Allyson nodded.

"_Alright then let's go, Grant i'll take the lead this time so-"_

"_Wait a minute," _he interrupted me with a rather hostile tone. "_Why do you have to lead, you think i'm not good enough?"_

"_No man it's just-"_

"_Am I not fast enough for you, is that it," _he said stepping closer towards me.

"_Grant it's not like that, I just think-"_

"_It doesn't matter what you think! I am way stronger than you, I can crush-"_

"_GRANT!" _I mentally screamed in his head, because he was reeling a fist back to hit me. "_What are you doing_!?"

Grant stopped, and for a moment looked really confused, like he woke up in a completely different room than the one he had went to sleep in.

"I…," he hesitated. "I don't know, what just happened, why do I feel like I was so angry?"

"It's ok man," I hesitantly told him. "It's the stone of Ares, I felt it's power as soon as we crossed into the Amazon, it's making us more aggressive, and clouding our judgement; we need to stay focused on the mission, that's the only way we'll get through this."

"Alright…yeah i'm cool"

"So it's ok if I take the lead?"

"Yeah man, be my guest."

"Ok then, let's move."

We zoomed through the Amazon for a a few more minutes, constantly keeping on the alert. I knew we were getting closer to the stone, because my inner rage was steadily building. As this rate, I was worried about whether or not we would tear each other apart when we found it. We zipped around a lot of trees, traversed down a steep cliff (gotta love super speed, and running down cliffs horizontally), and took a bunch of turns as my inner radar guided me towards the stone. Just when I thought the bull was gonna be the last of our worries, my Speed Sense kicked in again. This time the danger was behind us. I looked back, and saw something that made the bull we just fought, look like a pygmy puff. It was a giant boar made of tree bark and vines, with red glowing eyes, just like the bull. This pig had obsidian tusks coming out of it's mouth that had to be at least seven feet long. To make matters worse, the pig had obsidian horns growing all over its face. Three large ones were jutting out from both sides of his face, one large one was sticking out of it's forehead, making it look like a freaking unicorn, and it also happened to be coated with obsidian plates on his body and legs. In other words, this wouldn't be a simple slice and dice thing, we were gonna have to target it's weak points, and I didn't think porky, or veggie pork, was gonna let us stick him with blades, and smile about it.

Anyway, I was about to mentally scream at Grant to get out of the way, but as it turned out, he was just as aware of the threat as I was. Grant had also felt the monster's presence, and was rolling out of the line of trample ground. Allyson was airborne, so while she was very surprised, she was totally safe; that left me. I decided that it would be better to take it down a peg now, and finish it off with the team. I summoned my sword, stepped to the side, crouched, and swung hard at the boar's left knee cap. The plan was to take out the boar's leg, send it tumbling forwards, and while it was down, stab it multiple times in the back, and blast it with lightning while Grant and Allyson helped me. Yeah…so here's what really happened. I slashed at the boar's legs but apparently, he was a lot tougher than I thought. My blade bounced harmlessly off of his exposed inner skin, and was carried away due to the boar's momentum. The boar must have felt something, because as soon as he turned around, he set his sights on me. What he did next was so surprising, and so unexpected that it's only thank to my reflexes that I survived. The boar let out a massive REEEEEEETTTTTTT!, and spit a giant ball of blazing red fire at me. Time slowed down for me like it always does when i'm in danger, but I didn't dodge the fireball. This was because Grant was right behind me; I couldn't risk dodging the blast and letting him take the fall, so I quickly created a huge lightning shield and braced myself for the impact.

The shield held up beautifully, but the impact was still enough to send me flying backwards. Luckily, Grant caught me before I could crash into a tree, although I doubt my armor would have let me feel anything. The boar took this as a sign to attack, and charged. Before it could get within a few feet of me and Grant, a giant fist made of light slammed into him from the side, and sent him soaring into a cluster of trees.

"_Weapons out team," _I thought to Grant and Allyson. "_Stab it in it's weak spots while it's down, and get out before it regains it's footing again."_

"_What about me?" _asked Grant. "_Battle axes aren't much use at stabbing."_

"_Just swing hard at it's face dude, _I thought to him. "_Try and take out it's face spikes."_

Grant and I took off after the boar, and Allyson managed to keep up overhead. Either we were slowing down or she was speeding up; and as of a few days ago, I didn't do slow. We caught up to the boar, who was thrashing around on the ground. Before we got around to stabbing it, the boar stood up, and did a massive war squeal; there was no way we could attack it now. As if in an act of defiance, four sun constructs in the shape of metal clamps suddenly solidified around the boars legs. It thrashed, and pulled, and squealed until it was green in the face, but it wasn't going anywhere for now.

"_Nice one, Sunbird," _I thought to Allyson.

"_Yeah I know," _she said in a thick sarcastic mental tone. "_Now let's hurry up and kill it, I won't be able to hold him for long."_

The three of us charged the boar, and took our offensive positions. Allyson busted out her spear, and started stabbing deep into the weak points of boar's left side. I ran around to it's right side, willed lightning to set my sword ablaze (or asurge I guess), and started stabbing at all of the available weak points. I'd like to tell you that we were taking it down, but in truth, only Grant was actually doing any real damage. He swung his axe across the boar's face twice, hacking most of his face off, plus all of his spikes, excluding the unicorn horn. I was about to tell him to just go for the kill already, but before I could, Allyson mentally screamed in our heads: "_GUYS GET BACK NOW!"_

I wanted to protest, but in Speed Mode, I could clearly see that Allyson's constructs were starting to crack and crumble. Veggie porkers was gonna be free in just a few moments, and considering the fact that he was probably pissed about being poked and prodded, we all did the smart thing and got clear. The boar broke free of his constructs as soon as we were several feet away but that wasn't the worse part. As soon as it broke free, a huge surge of red energy engulfed the thing, and when the flare died out, the boar was completely healed. His cuts and gashes were completely sealed up; even his horns were completely restored.

"OH, COME ON!" Grant screamed aloud.

I wanted to scream the same thing. I mean seriously, how would you feel if after so much time and effort you put into killing something, it didn't die (that sounded a lot less psychotic in my head.)? Anyway, the boar opened his mouth and took aim at Grant. Before I could think to him to get out of the way, the boar fired a red hot blast of energy. Grant jumped out of the way, and before the boar could shoot at anything else, Allyson and I started pelting him with a barrage of lightning and sun. I hit the thing with everything I had, thunderbolts, lightning blasts, lightning strikes; nothing phased it. Allyson wasn't doing much better either. She blasted it with sun bolts, sun balls, even a few explosive blasts; nothing happened. Although I will admit, the boar looked pretty flustered when it got hit over the head by a giant solar sledgehammer, like a giant whack-a-mole. After that, the boar went ballistic.

He squealed a massive war squeal, and all of the spikes on his face shot off in multiple directions, like super sharp death missiles. The spikes kept regenerating as quickly as they left the boar's face, so there were at least six projectiles flying off every half a second. They were coming in at such high speeds, even I was almost skewered. Luckily, my Speed Sense kicked in, and I managed to grab Allyson, and put her behind a large tree for cover. Before you get worried about Grant, don't. I admit I was a little worried, but the spikes harmlessly bounced off of his armor, and didn't make a dent on his face. After the barrage of spikes had ended, the boar decided to go back to blasting fireballs at us. It wasn't very accurate, but the explosions were very deadly and I ordered the team to stay covered. Then I got an idea. Those fireballs were extremely volatile. If I could use them against the boar, and make them detonate inside of it, I could take it down from the inside out. I peered over the edge of the huge log I was taking cover under. The boar was settling down for now, but I couldn't let him rest up. I stood up straight and screamed at the top of my lungs: "I ATE YOUR MOTHER FOR BREAKFAST!"

Whether or not he understood me, I don't know; but at least I got his attention. He squealed loudly, and reeled up to blast me. Before the blast even left his mouth, I went into Speed Mode, pulled out my Thunder Shields (yeah, that's what I'm calling them now) and blasted the boar point blank in the mouth with two supercharged lightning bolts. The one thing that I didn't count on, was making a bomb. Yeah, my plan worked a little too well for my liking, because the boar was swelling up with so much energy that I knew the explosion would blow us into the next continent.

"GRANT, GET IT OUT OF HERE!" I mentally screamed to him.

Thankfully, Grant got my meaning better than I did. He grabbed the boar by it's tusks, and took off into the air. And when I say he took off, I mean he soared upward so fast, even I barely saw him move. He flew so fast that he broke the sound barrier, and didn't stop flying until he passed the clouds. What he did next, I didn't know; I couldn't see him. Although I took a wild guess that he threw the boar like a hot potato, and then flew back down at the speed of 10 race cars. The explosion from the boar was so massive, that if it was on the ground, it probably would have taken out ⅓ of the Amazon; i'm not even kidding. If this was meant to be a stealth mission, that ship has sailed, and crashed into an iceberg.

"Nice thinking, Super-G," I congratulated Grant after he landed. "You really saved our butts."

"Yeah, no thanks to you," said Allyson. "Nice shooting, bolt boy, you almost got us killed."

Now usually, I would have shrug this off, but considering the fact that she called me "bolt boy", not Thunder Man, I snapped back at her.

"Look," I started. "I didn't know that thing was gonna explode like that, I just thought the blast would be enough to kill it, get off my case will ya?

"No I won't." she responded. "You need to think before you go into things, you need to-"

Whatever she was going to say next, I didn't care, because at that moment, my Speed Sense went on red alert. I didn't bother to see what it was. All I knew was that it was behind me, it was dangerous, and that I was gonna die if I didn't kill it. I summoned my sword, did a 180 slash and decapitated the head of a giant cobra made of lots of tree vines. At first I thought that would be it. Of course, I keep forgetting that when something is too easy for me, it's usually just the opening act. Out of every tree that I could see in the Amazon, giant snakes made out of vines started to slither down and surround us. Almost all of the snakes were about the half the length of an average school bus and as thick as telephone poles. Most of them were the shape of cobras, with evil red eyes, energy flowing through their bodies, and sharp obsidian fangs ready to take a bite out of our necks (well maybe not Grant's). I ordered the team to stay still and not to make any sudden movements. My plan was to silently build up power, release and giant electric wave, and then go to work with the team slashing down snakes. Unfortunately, three of the snakes were having none of it and lunged at me. I quickly thrust out my hand, and three lightning bolts shot out, striking them all in the face, and blasting them to bits. So much for a surprise attack, now it was gonna be an outright brawl.

The snakes hissed loudly, and attacked all at once. I kicked into Speed Mode, pulled out my sword and went to work. Even with my speed, the snakes were moving kinda quick. I sliced three in half with one swing, sliced my sword in mid-air, creating an electric crescent, and taking out another ten; I also sliced down a few more on my left and right. 18 down, more than 200 to go. I know what you're probably thinking. We took out an army of robots in no time flat, why was I freaking out about some puny snakes that didn't even have laser cannons? The truth is, robots are not like, snakes. Robots have a system, robots have programming and stick to them. As long as we kept them apart, they were basically useless. Snakes were a little different. They were natural predators. Things like divide and conquer didn't mean much to them so long as they eventually got their fangs in your flesh. The fact that these snakes were made of vines, infused with the power of the Greek war god, and were attacking us in a flash mob, did not improve my morale. While I was busy slicing the things up, I caught a few glimpses of Grant doing his thing. Like me, he busted out his weapon, and was taking at least 10 snakes out by each swing of his axe. Occasionally, a few snakes would wrap around him and bite his armor, but he would simply throw his axe, taking out an entire line of snakes, wrestle the snakes off of his body, and crush them. Then he would call his axe back, and go back to work. It was Allyson that truly worried me. She didn't have super speed, and by extension, couldn't fight in speed terms. I slashed my blade in a huge arc, releasing a massive electric blast wave, taking out another 30 snakes on my side; that was enough to allow me some breathing room to check up on Allyson. As it turned out, she was doing just fine on her own. She was in her Sun Form, her golden light more fiery than usual, and was hacking down snakes left and right with a sun construct in the shape of a scythe. Anytime a snake got a hold of her, it caught fire and burnt to a crisp. She kept swinging her scythe and released multiple solar crescents, taking out snakes by the dozen; now that I was reassured, I could go back to doing my part.

We fought hard for 5 minutes taking down snakes, and basically destroying so much nature, Hannah would have never forgiven me (she's a girl from school, big nature enthusiast, we worked together on a science project one time). Yet even with all of our combined efforts, we were still being slowly overwhelmed. For every snake I chopped up and electrocuted, two more took it's place. Plus, in space terms, the team wasn't very well placed. If we were on compass points, Allyson would be on the north, I would be on the south, and Grant would be on the west. This meant that our entire eastern flank was left open. It wasn't as bad as you think it might be. Whenever things got dicey in that area, I shifted into SMS (Speed Mode Supreme), and took out a good chunk of the charging force, or Allyson blazed the living crap out them. Still, at the rate we were going at, the snake army would have us pinned down in 5 minutes. In fact, after about 3 more minutes of fighting, things got really bad. In that moment, it was like nature had suddenly had 1,000 snake babies, and from all four sides, an avalanche of nature serpents charged our small, and if I may be honest, downright puny team.

I immediately tapped into SMS, but I put way more energy into it this time. In my perspective, time was basically standing still, giving me enough time to survey the battlefield and plan accordingly. Again, Allyson proved she didn't need any help. Either on purpose, or because of her reflexes, Allyson was releasing a huge wave of golden fire on her aggressors. I could already see the ones burning, and I knew that all of the other ones were doomed to die in a blaze of solar fire; the north side was covered. Grant on the other hand was not doing good at all. He was already being constricted by three huge cobras and was fumbling around with his battle axe. I did the good friend thing and cut him loose, then went back to figuring out a way to get the team out of this mess. I knew I didn't have much time, using this much energy, even with my suit on, was way too much to maintain for long. I figured I could probably hack a lot of these things to shreds alone, but a lot wasn't enough; I needed them all dead within the next four seconds. The only problem was that I was the only person here that had super speed, besides Grant; and even he was no comparison when I was in SMS.

Suddenly, I got an idea. Grant wasn't as fast as me, but what if he was? I ran over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I could sense that he was moving at about half the speed of sound; amateur, I was moving at half the speed of light (exaggeration). But by touching his shoulder, I could see why. Both of our speed powers generated from our mutant ability to enhance the speed of our cells. Grant's cells were moving way faster than a normal person's, but still, my cells were moving MUCH faster. That's when it hit me, maybe his cells just needed a bit of a jump start. Honestly, I would never try this on anyone but Grant, and even then I was sort of ashamed about what I did; but at least it worked. I willed my hands to surge with about 100,000 volts of electricity (yeah, I know that's a lot of power), and touched Grant's shoulder again. I willed the voltage not to supercharge Grant's body, but his cells; of course his body was still gonna take a jolt. At first the voltage did nothing, but I could feel the electricity speeding up Grant's cells. After about 2 seconds in real time, his body started to vibrate, up to the point to where he was just a blur. Then a second later, his body solidified, and he was on the ground gasping for air, and whining about the pain in his shoulder.

"Welcome to Speed Mode Supreme," I told him.

"Ohh, dude my f*(!^&amp; shoulder!" he moaned. "What the hell did you do to me?!"

"Super charged your cells, made you able to travel faster than thought itself. Now stop whining and get up, we got snakes to kill."

After he stopped moaning, and stood up, I created a huge Thunder Axe for him to use, and a Thunder Blade for myself.

"So, i'll take the ones on the right, you take the ones on the left?" he asked me.

"Unnecessary bro," I said. "Just run around and kill whatever isn't wearing a battlesuit."

Between the two of us being armed with two weapons, we mopped up most of the snakes easily. I decided to follow Grant's suggestion and stick to certain sections. After we both cleaned up our respective areas, we took out the oncoming barrage of our serpent aggressors coming from the east side; cleanup probably took less than a second in regular people speed terms.

"Think we need to help Sunbird out?" Grant asked me as soon as we were done.

"Nah," I said. "She's got this."

"What's with you two anyway, bro?".

"I'll explain later dude."

"Cool, but uhhh, I can't slow myself down, what now?"

I closed my eyes, stuck my hands out, and focused. I could feel all of the electrical energy I put into Grant's cells still pulsing around like crazy. What I was about to do was going to be 10x more dangerous, and 10x more painful for Grant, than actually putting the electricity in his body. I willed all of the electricity to stop surging around in his cells, and very, very, carefully, I willed the voltage to leave his body through the same way it entered: his left shoulder. Grant screamed loudly as the voltage left his body for like half a second before his voice stopped working. At first, I was scared I might have killed him, but when I opened my eyes, his face still had an excruciating look; he was just moving slower. The process was way faster than giving him the voltage, and in about three seconds SPT (Slow People Time), Grant was back to normal, or as normal as a teenage mutant superhero can be, and was crashed out on the ground. I shifted out of Speed Mode, and walked over to check on him; meanwhile, Allyson was blazing the living *^%$ out of the oncoming snakes on her side.

"How you feeling there, Super-G?" I asked him.

"I'll live," he said through gritted teeth. "Next time, let me get faster the old fashioned way, bro."

Allyson flew over, and landed next to us shortly after her snake BBQ.

"What happened?" she asked Grant with a really surprised look on her face. "Where are the other snakes?"

"Thunder Man supercharged me with a million volts," said Grant. "Helped make me faster, then we mowed them all down together. Afterwards, Thunder Man super drained me, now I am in serious pain; please, for the love of God, help me."

Naturally, Allyson only heard: "Thunder Man supercharged me with a million volts,-now I am in serious pain, etc." She turned towards me and glared fiercely.

"You electrocuted him," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. This time it wasn't out of fear, it was out of being straight up pissed off.

"Yeah, but in my defense, it was only 100,000 volts not a million."

"ONLY 100,000!?" she screamed at me. "YOU COULD HAVE KILLED HIM!"

"Yeah but I didn't I made him faster."

Before Allyson could blow my head off with more megawords, Grant spoke up.

"Uhh guys?" he started. "Not to be rude here, but I am still in serious pain, a little sun power would be welcome."

Allyson shot me one last murder stare, and knelt next to Grant. After 10 seconds of Sun Healing, the big guy was back on his feet. Allyson glared at me again, but before she could resume her death rant, missive vines, the size of bridge cables, wrapped around me, her, and Grant.

I didn't know what was more surprising, the fact that I was being strangled to death by vines, or the fact that my Speed Sense didn't pick up on the threat. I looked up at the vines strangling Allyson, and realized that they weren't just random vines trying to crush us to death. These were giant cobras, made of vines, tree, bark, with huge red eyes, ten foot long obsidian fangs, surging with the power of Ares, and big enough to wrap themselves around the statue of liberty. This was not a good place to be in. Try as I might, I was pretty much incapable of freaking out. I know that I probably should have, but after fighting a bull, boar, and an army of snakes, all made of plant life, this didn't surprise me. I wasn't scared, but I was definitely pissed off. Apparently, Grant and Allyson shared my frustration, because the looks on their faces made it clear that they were having none of this bull. Grant strained against his cobra, and after a few seconds of struggling, managed to slice his way through the cobra's body with one swing of his axe, and took to the air to chop it's head to shreds. Simultaneously, Allyson screamed really loud, and blazed in golden fire. The fire grew, and grew, and grew, until Allyson and the giant snake were consumed in a blaze of fire about 150 ft tall, poor thing never should have messed with her. All that was left was me.

For some reason, my cobra, looked down at me with his gleaming blood red eyes and tilted it's head as if it was asking me a question. Now I don't speak parseltongue (In sorting quizzes I usually get Gryffindor or Hufflepuff), but i'm pretty sure the snake was saying something like: "_Sssssssoooooo, what are you gonna do, little sssssuper hero?" _That made me mad. The snake started to squeeze his body really tight around me, but for some reason, I wasn't being crushed. I looked at my body, and saw that I was covered in a very thin electrical barrier. It was small, and I don't know how my body generated it without my command, but it was keeping me alive; I had to get out, before it cracked under the pressure. I closed my eyes and concentrated on a lightning strike. Not just any lightning strike mind you, I needed a large amount of thunder, big enough to blow that oversized snake head to mulch. I imagined all of my power big transferred into a huge thundercloud, and striking the snake dead in the face in the form of a huge and deadly lightning strike. I felt a constricting feeling in my chest, like someone put me in a lead jacket. Suddenly, the air turned cooler, the sun was blocked out by something, and I heard the sound of thunder claps, louder than two football stadiums full of screaming fans. I opened my eyes, and yelled at the top of my lungs. A moment later, a massive lightning bolt ripped through the clouds, and struck the cobra dead in it's face. The beast's head was blasted to bits, and it's limp body dropped me to the ground. The only bad news was that summoning that lightning bolt had exhausted me completely; luckily, I was wearing a battle suit that was filling my body with 1000 volts per second. My energy returned quickly, and I was on my feet in no time. I looked up and found no trace of thunder clouds anywhere; good thing, I really liked the sunshine.

Grant and Allyson found their way over to me, and checked to see if I was okay. After waving them off, I gave the team a 2 minute break to catch their breath (we weren't tired), and we continued our trek through the dangerous, plant-monster infested, Amazon.

I wish I could say things got easier from then on out, I REALLY wish I could tell you that. The truth? It only got worse. Over the course of the next hour we faced off against a giant plant-made rhino, lion, and I kid you not, an honest to God, plant made dragon. The rhino and the lion weren't so tough, or maybe the team was getting better at facing eco-monsters. The way we beat the rhino? Grant and I summoned our weapons, I supercharged both of them with lightning, and as the beast was charging, we went into Speed Mode, and took out it's front legs. Allyson finished it off with a death-from-above blazing spear stab to the head, and it burned into nothingness. The lion was a lot more difficult. Unlike the rhino, he was a lot faster, and had much sharper battle reflexes. Grant, Allyson, and I tried to hack it to shreds with our weapons, but it was way too quick for that; the lion even got one good scratch across the chest on Grant. Allyson and I also tried blasting it, but the lion was fast, as in Speed Mode fast. We couldn't get a lock on it to save our lives, literally. Finally, after like five minutes of getting slashed at, we managed to trick the lion into running into a net made of Allyson's Sun Energy. The lion was burning pretty good in that net, but he was thrashing around too much for my liking. I created a Thunder Whip, and slashed it in half, putting it out of it's misery. The dragon was the last straw for me. It's not that I was scared of a ten foot tall, giant reptile with huge bat-like wings that could breathe fire (I was totally terrified), but still, really nature? Anyway, it's not like I did much in the battle. I blasted it with lightning, and I stuck my sword into it's back a good few times, but ultimately, the battle would be decided in the air; and guess who couldn't fly? After a good few jabs with my sword, a good few swings from Grant's axe, and a few stabs from Allyson's knives, the dragon got the gist that it wasn't wanted on ground level, and took off into the air. After a spectacular aerial battle, that involved a lot of fire breathing, and a large amount of roaring, Grant and Allyson finally managed to slash of it's wings, and as it was falling down, I hit it with a Final Flash, vaporizing it before it could even touch the ground. To be honest, that was just a summary. Over the course of that battle, a lot of fire was blasted, a lot of trees were torched, and a lot of swear words were shouted by me and Grant.

After the dragon fight, things got quiet for a while, and we were able to make some good distance through the Amazon. I could tell we were getting closer to that giant river that splits the Amazon in half, but something seemed off. We were moving fast, too fast; it almost felt like we were running/flying straight into a trap, so I ordered the team to halt, and take cover behind some trees.

"_Why are we stopping, Thunder Man?" _Allyson thought to me.

"_Just hang back for a sec," _I thought to her. "_Let me check something out."_

I tapped into SMS and ran forward.

If it wasn't for my super ultra speed powers, I would have died at least ten times over. For starters, my Speed Sense kicked off almost every few seconds. I I had to constantly jump over, or duck under lots of trip wires. I sensed lots of pitfalls that probably had spikes at the bottom of them; luckily, moving super fast means gravity is irrelevant. I also ran through entire platoons of plant made soldiers. They were shaped like humans, but of course, they had blood red eyes, and were surging with war god energy. They had sharp obsidian teeth, like sharks, and their bodies were basically massive amounts of tree bark held together with vines and probably mulch for internal organs and junk. They were all equipped with obsidian armor, weapons, and shields. In short, these guys knew we were coming, and they were ready to take us down. I ran through the entire fighting force, and after while, I found a break off. The plant warrior army expanded for miles, but then the army stopped, and for miles ahead, it was nothing but clear running ground. I ran a bit further, just to be safe, and to my surprise, found out I was totally wrong. At the river that breaks the Amazon in half, was a massive obsidian fortress with hundreds of tree soldiers patrolling the top of the wall, armed with crossbows. The fortress also had a defense team on the ground; five platoons of soldiers all dressed in armor, and armed to the teeth with obsidian weapons. I knew I couldn't blast the wall down, neither could Allyson, but maybe Grant could break it. However, our real trouble was in the river. I didn't see it, but my Speed Sense went nuts when I got closer to the water. Something big and powerful was in there, something that was a last stand guarantee, to make sure Delta Force did not get any further. You wouldn't believe how fast I ran back to my friends.

"_So what do we do?" _Grant asked me, after I thought to him and Alyson what we were up against. "_Wanna charge in and smash stuff?"_

"_We can't do that, Grant," _I thought to him. "_There are way too many trip lines and booby traps, we can't charge through without risking Allyson's life."_

"_What do you mean 'Allyson's life'?" _she defiantly, thought to me. "_I can defend myself just fine."_

"_I didn't say you couldn't." _I thought to her. "_But this isn't a question about strength or skill, it's about speed, and you're just not fast enough to avoid so many traps, and now that I think of it, even Grant might have trouble keeping up."_

"_Dude!" _Grant thought to me indignantly_._

"_Sorry bro, it's just facts, unless you want me to jump start you again."_

"_I'm good."_

"_Anyway, there's a break in their defense, if we run around their ranks, and reach the calm area, we can attack the fortress and just maybe get across before the army realizes were deep in their territory."_

"_What's the plan for attacking the fortress?" _Allyson asked me.

"_I'm gonna run up the wall and take out the patrolling force, shouldn't take more than a few seconds. While I'm doing that, I need you to create a mini sun and trash the ground forces. Grant, while that's going on, I need you to smash through the obsidian wall, can you do that?"_

"_Of course, I can rip through steel, obsidian is nothing. But why break through it, why not fly over it?"_

I told them about the monster, lurking in the river; they took it surprisingly well.

"_If we go over," _I thought to them. "_The thing might attack from below, it'll be safer to take it on from the shore, where we at least have the element of defense."_

"_I still think we should do an upfront attack," _thought Grant. "_Running around the battle like a bunch of pansies is not cool."_

"_Too bad," _I thought to him. "_I'm team leader, and I say we go around."_

"_Well I say…." _Grant clutched his head and for a moment, his eyes went red.

"_Whoa, you alright there buddy," _I asked him cautiously.

Grant shook his head a few times, and after holding his face a little longer, his eyes lost the red glare.

"_Yeah," _he thought to me. "_It's just, that stone, we should get moving, we're going around their main defense, right bro?"_

"_Yeah," _I thought back to him "_But we're gonna need to move really fast."_

"_Not a problem bro. When you de-supercharged me, my body still kept some of the power. I'm way faster now, in fact when we started running again, I almost ran straight into a tree; didn't know my own speed. So I may not be as fast as you, but I can definitely keep up."_

"_Ok then well I guess you'll have to carry Ally-"_

"_NO HE WON'T," _Allyson screamed into our heads. "_For your information, I can use more sun power to fly faster, I just choose not to, because it takes a lot of energy to keep up. Now that I have this suit, I can kick up my flight speed a few notches. By the way: IF YOU EVER CARRY ME AGAIN LIKE A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, I WILL BLAST YOU INTO THE NEXT GALAX_Y!"

Grant and I did the safe thing, and said we were sorry and stuff like that. Then, after a quick stretch, we took off sideways, heading around the plant army. Just like they said, even in SMS, Grant and Allyson were keeping up with me just fine. Grant looked like he was straining a bit, but I figured he'd never let me hear him say he'd quit, so I kept going. Allyson on the other hand was doing just fine, she looked like a blazing comet, and I could barely make out her body figure, but at least she was fast. At first I was worried that the light might give us away, but then I remembered, I was basically a trail of lightning. Plus, we were going so fast, I doubt anything could have seen us anyway. We ran for like ten minutes through the path I chose. Just as we were about to make a turn and head towards the break in the plant soldier's army, something big and fast tackled me really hard, and I tumbled for a while before I hit a tree. That's when everything went red, and I completely lost it.

(Allyson's Perspective)

I didn't know what to think. One minute, they were getting along fine, being stupid boys. The next minute, it was all I could do to stop them from murdering each other. Hey readers, it's me again, and right now I have to save Thunder-Man and Super-G.

It all started after, the team decided to take the long way around some death traps, and attack the enemy from the inside of their defensive base. At first, I thought this was a bit stupid, but considering the fact that I do not look good when i'm being killed by spike beds, I decided to go along with the plan. We raced through the Amazon at top speed, and I gotta say, I was loving it. I had never tried to go this fast before when I was flying, because I never had the energy to pull it off. With this suit on, things were different and I was able to soar through the Amazon at God knows how fast. Except for Jason and Grant, everything seemed slower in this speed, like the world was holding it's breath. I could see the wind blowing against the leaves on the trees, but it was like they were going through syrup. I felt more aware, focused, and stronger than I had ever been in my life. However, I was so caught up in the excitement of my new found speed, that I didn't notice Grant leaping into Jason, until it was too late. The two of them crashed into the ground, tumbled a good ten feet,then Grant grabbed Jason by his back and threw him into a tree. I was so surprised, my voice seemed to stop working.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Jason screamed at the top of his lungs at Grant when he got up.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? HOW LONG ARE WE GONNA RUN AWAY? I WANNA HIT SOMETHING!" Grant screamed back at him.

"WE WERE LITERALLY ABOUT TO TURN DUDE! WE WERE LIKE FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM THEIR BASE, WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?!"

"WHY ARE YOU A TERRIBLE LEADER?!"

"BOTH OF YOU STOP IT!" I screamed at them.

Don't get me wrong, the last thing I wanted to do was get in the middle of a bro fight, but this was an exception. Grant was not the type of guy to Edge spear someone for no good reason. Jason may have been an unbalanced psycho warpath, put he at least knew the difference between his enemies and his friends. Something was wrong with them, something I was overlooking; then I looked at their eyes. Pure. Blood. Red. The answer was so obvious, I started kicking myself for being so stupid; we were getting closer to the stone of Ares, which meant Grant and Jason were going to be more aggressive and reckless. Unfortunately, their anger was being directed at the wrong people.

"I DIDN'T WANNA BE A PART OF THIS STUPID TEAM!" Jason yelled at Grant, completely ignoring my existence. "BUT I AM TEAM LEADER, AND YOU WILL OBEY MY ORDERS!"

"LIKE HELL I WILL!" Grant screamed back at Jason. "YOU DON'T BELONG HERE OR ANYWHERE FOR THAT MATTER, GO BACK TO BEING A NOBODY!"

"GRANT, STOP IT, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!" I shouted.

I didn't have much love for Jason anymore, not after that whole thing back at the Helicarrier, but I did know that Grant was the closest thing to a best friend Jason had ever had. I couldn't let some stupid rock tear them apart.

"YOU'RE ONE TO TALK, BENCH WARMER!" Jason continued. "HOW'S IT FEEL TO KNOW YOU GOTTA BUY TICKETS TO EVER BE NEAR A FOOTBALL GAME EVER AGAIN?!"

Grant's eyes flared dangerously, and he summoned his battle axe. I instinctively stepped out of reach, but I still racked my brain desperately, trying to think of a way to keep them from fighting. I started to hum in my head, the way I do when I get nervous.

"You think that scares me?" Jason asked him, his voice deadly calm. "You may be strong, big, and fast, but you will never have my skill."

"Don't need it to kill you," Grant responded.

Jason summoned his sword. I didn't say a word, I doubt I could have. Jason and Grant yelled furiously, but before they could charge at each other, I trapped them in solar constructs shaped like giant containment cells. It was mostly on instinct, and I wasn't thinking of those cells in particular but I wanted to create something that would keep them apart. Needless to say, it didn't work for very long. I already knew Grant could break through my constructs, so it didn't surprise me when he swung his axe, and shattered it like glass. Jason however, was a different story. Because he didn't have super strength, I didn't think too much on him; so I was way more than surprised when he yelled really loud, and broke my construct from the inside out with a huge electric blast wave, knocking me off my feet.

When I got up, I was terrified, because I couldn't see Grant or Jason. Then, as if the air just plopped them from an invisible portal, Grant crashed to the ground, and Jason was leaning against a tree. They didn't stay down for a second, and almost immediately got back in the fight . Jason was right about one thing, Grant didn't have his skill. Grant swung his axe at Jason's head, but Jason simply dodged it, and caught the shaft of the axe on the flat of his blade. Jason then kicked Grant in the chest and Grant went soaring backwards due, to the fact that a lightning bolt shot out of Jason's foot. Jason charged at Grant again, but this time, Grant dodged him, countered, and the two suddenly disappeared. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually I caught on to the fact that they weren't disappearing, they were just going at speeds faster than I could see. This didn't sit well with me, they could be slashing at each other ten times per second, and I wouldn't be able to tell. At this point, they were following the same rhythm. Fight in super speed, crash to the ground, fight in super speed again, but it would only be a matter of time before the rhythm ended, and one of them came back with their head missing. I thought on how the world seemed to slow down when I was flying at Comet Speed, yeah that's what I'll call it. I focused on getting there again. I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, and willed my body to speed up. For those of you that don't know, light is very fast. I couldn't hit lightspeed just yet, even with a year of training, but at least I was good enough to hit 3,000 mph. My body was engulfed in light, and I felt my insides heat up and vibrate, like they were being microwaved. I was scared at first, but I kept going until my body felt normal again. At first I thought I had failed, but when I opened my eyes, I could keep up with Grant and Jason's death match. For some reason, while in Comet Speed, everything was surrounded in a beautiful golden light, but I couldn't focus on that right now; Grant and Jason needed me.

When I managed to shift into Comet Speed, I saw Jason, on the verge of stabbing Grant in the gut with his sword. I quickly created a sun shield to protect him, and the sword bounced harmlessly away. Then I created a sun lasso, threw it around Jason's body and yanked him away from Grant. If you wanna know what the plan was, well, I didn't really have one. My main focus was just keeping them apart, and even that wasn't working out so well. When I yanked Jason away, Grant regained his balance, and charged forward, his axe raised for the killing blow like an executioner. I created a giant solar hand, and slapped him sideways into a few trees, but when I looked down, Jason wasn't in the lasso; how'd he get out? For the next few minutes I was in a frantic struggle to keep the two idiot warriors from killing each other. Believe it or not, I honestly have never had to deal with anything harder in my life. It seemed like the more I helped, the worse the situation became. When I shielded Grant from a lightning hammer, he charged Jason, and tackled him to the ground. When I shielded Jason from a fatal axe swing, he blasted Grant with a bolt of lightning and continued his relentless assault. The only good thing I can say about them was that they were extremely dedicated to killing each other. Good thing too, it kept their focus off of me, who was actually fighting more than the two of them put together. Finally, after lots of broken constructs, lots of close shaves, and occasional lightning strikes, I managed to subdue my teammates in an effective manner. I call them Sunspots. They're basically solar pads that amplify gravity, like an actual sun, but I made sure to leave out the part where they burn you into ash. Just so you know, doing this was not as easy as it sounded. For all of you muscle heads out there, imagine lifting 300 pounds at the gym. Maintaining these solar pads was about the same as that, even with my battle suit giving me more power, I was still struggling to keep it together. Even worse, somehow Grant and Jason were slowly rising to their feet. That didn't make any sense whatsoever, the sunspots were like 30x the earth's gravity, even Grant shouldn't have been able to get up; but that wasn't stopping them at all. I tried to make the gravity more intense, but it wasn't doing anything except tiring myself out even more. Jason and Grant stood tall, and summoned their weapons again, I didn't know if they could actually walk or anything, but that didn't matter. Jason's blade started to surge with lightning, and he slowly raised it for a slash, at the same time Grant lifted his axe, and reeled it back for a throw. Right before they could kill each other, or should I say right before Grant killed Jason, the unthinkable happened; they both suddenly dropped to their knees. I was so relieved, that I stopped concentrating on the solar pads and slowly walked toward them. They seemed to be shaking something off, like a fly was on their heads. Their eyes shifted from blood red, to electric/sky blue; somehow, they were fighting off the stone's influence, but how? Then it hit me so suddenly, I started kicking myself, mentally speaking, because the answer was so obvious I overlooked it. While I was trying to maintain the Sunspots, I was simultaneously singing. This may not seem like much but, when we crossed into the Amazon, I felt the power of Ares wash over me like a wave at the beach. The only reason that I didn't go into a war frenzy, was because I was silently humming a song to myself. You see, my songs have more to them than just physical healing qualities, they can also cure mental illnesses, and are very good for calming down someone with high anger levels. This entire time, I was protecting myself from the stone's influence with my hums, but now Jason and Grant needed the same protection.

I ran over to them, and spread my hands over their heads. Don't ask me how, but I could sense the war energy in their heads, like it was a massive red cloud. I could sense that their subconscious was trying to reject this energy, but didn't have the power to expel it. I took a deep calming breath and started to sing my favorite song ever covered by Glee: Lean on Me. Don't judge me because I like Glee, i'm pretty sure their are at least 20 of you that like My Little Pony. Anyway, I sung the first few verses and the chorus. Also, one thing you should know about my songs, is that I have multiple voices when I sing. The first one is all me, but the other ones are basically my thoughts. For example, you know how there are always backup singers to a performer? Well, I basically have mental backup singers. When I sing, if I imagine another voice breaking off for background vocals and such, it'll actually work, and be heard all coming from my mouth, so to make it simple, I sing, and then mentally project the background vocals. Make sense? That's because it shouldn't.

After, I finished singing, Grant and Jason unsteadily got up too their feet, so I created floating solar couches for them to sit on, until they recovered from the residual effects of the stone. Now I know you're probably asking how they were going to maintain their freedom from the stone without my help, and the truth is they couldn't, and they wouldn't have to. I kept mentally humming to protect myself, but now, I spread the influence over to Grant and Jason. It wasn't like a melody screaming in their heads all the time, but it was a light hum deep in the background of their skulls. Simple, but effective; they wouldn't turn into warbound creatures anymore.

"Uhhh," moaned Grant. "My head is killing me, what happened."

I quickly retold the events of what happened after he tackled Jason.

"I really did that?" he asked with a horrified look on his face. "Oh man, Jason, I am so sorry bro."

"It's fine man," Jason responded. "I lost control too, luckily Allyson was there to save us."

He shot me a thankful glance, and I politely nodded back at him, biting down my giddiness.

"No it's not," said Grant. "I could have killed you, plus all those things I said to you while I was out of it, i'm starting to remember…. dude you are not a terrible leader, and I was totally behind your plan of attack, it's just-"

"Don't mention it bro," said Jason. "I said some harsh things that I didn't mean as well. Grant, I don't know how, but I know you will get another shot at being a superstar. You won't have to watch football games, you'll be in the starting line-up in them."

Grant and Jason nodded, but avoided eye contact. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and just plopped them on the ground.

"Oh my God, just hug already! Honestly how can men be fearless in the face of certain death, and at the same time, terrified of talking it out with their best friends?"

Grant and Jason laughed, got off of the couches, and gave each other a short hug. Of course because they were the epitome of stereotypical guys, and had to prove they weren't "gay", there was lots of back patting.

"Oh, and guys?" asked Jason after it was over. "About that whole stupid team thing, I just want you to know that I really like being on this team. Sure this wasn't on the top of my to do list, but i've had more fun with you guys than I ever had back at my old school; i'm gonna see this thing through with you guys no matter what."

"Don't worry about it Thunder-Man," said Grant. "By the way, I know it's safe to think our real names to each other, but can we use our code names mentally and vocally while wearing the suit?"

"_No problem, Super-G," _Jason thought to him with a huge grin.

At this point, it was all I could do to stay mad at Jason. How could someone so violent, be so sincere and sweet at the same time? Grant and I said thank you and stuff, but I tried not to hold Jason's gaze for too long. Anyway, Jason asked us if we were ready to go, and after a small yep, followed by a "hell yeah!" from Grant, we took off towards the obsidian fortress.

The run/flight only took about two minutes and we took cover behind some trees that were a good 10 feet away from the fortress. Jason was right, the soldiers were armed to the teeth with armor and weapons, there were so many guards keeping watch on top of the wall, I was surprised we weren't spotted yet. After a few seconds, Jason mentally asked Grant and I if we were ready to attack. We both thought yes back to him, and suddenly, he was on top of the wall with the obsidian soldiers. Before they had time to react to his presence, two huge bolts of lightning shot left and right from Jason's position, blasting anything within range to bits. I was so surprised, I almost forgot that I was supposed to be doing my thing too. I snapped back into focus, and concentrated on creating a mini sun ten feet in the air above the platoon of soldiers. At this point, creating suns was an easy task, all I had to do was imagine and extremely hot ball of fire, with enough gravitational force to lift 300 pounds off of the ground, hovering in the air. In 3 seconds, the platoons of soldiers were being lifted from the ground, and into their fiery deaths by the lot.

"_Super-G!" _I frantically thought to Grant. "_Do the thing, now!"_

"_On it!" _he thought back to me, before dashing off to smash the wall.

He summoned his axe, and started hacking away at the wall. At first, it seemed like he was wasting his time, but I could see pieces of the wall crumbling away, it would take some time, but Grant would eventually carve us a path through the wall. Now, I know you probably think we were stupid for going through the fortress rather than over, or around it, but the truth was, we couldn't. Jason forgot to mention this but, in every direction where the river cuts through the Amazon, a red barrier guarded the borders, and was only broken off at this small point. So there was no way to go around or avoid the fortress. Anyway, Grant was making some good progress, and Jason had pretty much mopped up all of the soldiers patrolling the top of the walls. Just when I thought we were going to get through an easy one for once, I heard the sounds of an army charging behind me. I turned around and saw, to my most absolute horror, that the army that Jason had warned us about were charging straight at us. Our plan for getting through the fortress before we were noticed had failed, now we had to fight on two fronts.

"SUNBIRD!" Jason screamed. "PUT UP A BARRIER AROUND YOU AND GRANT, I'LL HOLD EM' OFF UNTIL HE'S DONE SMASHING THROUGH THE FORTRESS!"

Apparently, he was aware of the oncoming threat as well. Still, even with his speed and skill, he couldn't hope to hold off a force of that size, so I pitched a different suggestion.

"_No," _I thought to him. "_Even you can't hold off an army of that size for very long. I'll put up a barrier around Super-G, but i'll stay outside of it, and help you defend Grant; don't worry, i'll protect myself too, but you won't have to fight alone."_

"_Sound's like a plan, let's do it, but be careful." _he thought to me, as he zoomed toward the oncoming army.

I quickly raised a shield around Grant, informed him of the plan, and took to the air. I created a small outer body shield to deflect any projectiles, and started blasting at anything that wasn't human, Grant had better hurry up, because even with the two of us, we couldn't hold out forever.

(Jason's Perspective)

I zipped down from the top of the fortress, my sword in hand, and counter charged the avalanche of plant warriors. Don't ask me what my plan was, because the only words I have for you are: slash, blast, run, and stab. The army spanned at least 100 meters wide and had hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers stacked behind each other. Charging head into them would be outright stupid, so instead, I willed a lot of voltage to build up in my blade, and when I slashed at the air, a huge arc of lightning shot out of my blade, and vaporized five rows of soldiers. Not enough to make a difference but it was something. I ran around for a while, slashing down soldiers left and right, and occasionally blasting them with lightning, but that still wasn't enough; i'd have to dig deep, and really use some thunder power to make a real difference. I focused on a massive thunder storm, I wanted lightning flashing in every direction possible, and blasting the living crap out of these plant soldiers. Thunder boomed, storm clouds formed several feet in the air and the lightning came down. When I say the lightning came down, I mean multiple bolts of lightning shot out of the thunder clouds, and blasted anything in reach that wasn't me. The good news about this was that a lot of soldiers were being taken out, probably about 30 per second, plus the other 5 per second with my sword slashes. I probably could have taken out more with my sword, but remember when I said while using lightning, my Speed Mode access was slightly limited? Well, I was maintaining a massive lightning right now, it wasn't hard to maintain, especially with my new battle suit, but it still put a cap on how fast I could go. Believe me, I almost got skewered a good few times. It was during this time that I really appreciated Allyson's offer to help me hold these guys off. I didn't see her, but every second, in addition to my lightning strikes, golden balls of fire rained down from the sky, taking out 10 soldiers with every volley. I had to hand it to her, Allyson knew how to use those things. One time, a sun blast was on a direct course with me, but before it made impact, it swerved around, and pelted a random plant soldier that was behind me. In fact, now that I think about it, all of the sun blasts were doing that, shooting one way, and changing directions if they weren't aimed at a soldier; they were basically like heat seeking missiles.

After about five minutes of fighting (Grant sure was taking his sweet time with that wall), Grant sent me a mental message saying that he had finally broken through the wall, and that we could come through. The only problem with that, was we were still neck deep in plant soldiers; there would be no way we could escape them, especially when we still had to deal the the Amazon river monster.

"_GO!" _Allyson screamed in my head. "_I'll open the barrier so you can get in, but you need to hurry!"_

"_I can run faster, than a race car at top speed, the word 'hurry' means nothing to me anymore," _I thought to her as I released one last electric blast wave, taking out another 100 soldiers for good measure, and raced inside the small opening in Allyson's barrier.

Allyson flew down from the sky and entered the barrier via a small hole at the top. The soldiers collided with the barrier and started to bash on it. They didn't make any progress but Allyson couldn't keep the barrier up all day. Before I could think of something, Allyson, ran to the edge of her barrier, created a solar fist around her right hand, and struck the barrier with all of her strength. I knew what was gonna happen, I did the same thing myself just yesterday. Ok, i'm just gonna say it, the blastwave burned down, most of the army, as well as a lot plant life. I did feel bad about that; I mean i'm not a nature freak but i'm also not a nature destroyer either. Allyson and I looked at each other, looked at the aftermath of the blastwave, and looked back at each other. The message was clear: keep going forward, don't look back, because it's not gonna be pretty. We ran after Grant, who was already at the edge of the lake, looking intently into the water.

"I can't see anything down there." he said when we caught up to him. "Thought you said there was some type of massive monster down there, Thunder-Man."

I ignored his doubtful statement; my Speed Sense was going crazy right now, so the monster was definitely here. However, I did see Grant's point. I read somewhere that the Amazon river can be as deep as 300 feet. Take that and add it with the murkiness of the water, and you get a pretty decent place to stash a killer plant monster.

"Super-G, go and get a huge chunk of obsidian for me." I ordered him.

"Why?"

"Just do it, I have a theory to experiment."

Grant gave me the 'dude you're insane' look, but still ran back to the wall and returned with a chunk of of obsidian about the size of a golf cart.

"Now what bro?" he asked me.

"Throw it high in the air, over the lake." I told him.

Again, he flashed me with the look, but did as he was told, and launched the obsidian high into the air. My reputation for being right at the worst times was reinforced. Quicker than my Speed Mode could alert me, a huge, bulky, monstrous figure, soared out of the depths of the river with the speed of a missile. It swallowed the obsidian in it's massive jaws, and then looked straight at us. To be honest, I don't know what the thing was exactly. It was kind of a mix between a sea serpent and a humanoid dragon. It was 60 feet tall, made completely of vines and tree bark, with huge arms and obsidian talons that could impale a pickup truck. It's eyes were blood red, and it spewed fire from it's mouth and nose with every breath. It's face was similar to the Namekian Shenron, for those of you that follow DBZ, and now that I mention it, the monster almost looked like Namekian Shenron, right down to the massive serpent tail extending from it's torso on down. After, eating the obsidian, the monster, turned it's gaze to us, and his eyes seemed to gleam at the sight. If he could talk, I imagine he would have said something like: '_yummy, some tasty mini heroes to eat._' I should have been extremely terrified and panicking, but at this point, I really was beyond that. It's not that I wasn't afraid, I mean, this was a 60 feet tall plant-made dragon monster getting ready to destroy me, who wouldn't be scared. But, after all i'd been through in the past couple of days, from the robots, to the exam, and especially the plant monsters trying to kill us every step of the way, fear had no power over me anymore; if anything, I was more annoyed than scared. Seriously, this was a long day, I just wanted to get the stone, get back to the Helicarrier, and take a shower; this dragon thing was not gonna get in my way. I thrusted my arms into the air, focused on a Mega Lightning Strike, and with a yell, thrusted my hands in the direction of the monster. The air turned colder as thunderclouds blocked out the sun. Thunder boomed really loud, and a second later, the dragon was lost in a huge bolt of lightning, that struck it from the head, and engulfed it's whole body.

Summoning that much thunder made me realize one thing, I was getting stronger. The first time I summoned a bolt of lightning like that, it drained the hell out of me. Now, I was only halfway, drained, like the feeling you get when you run a considerable distance, but still have a good amount of fuel left in the tank. Good thing too, the team still had a ways to go before getting to the stone. Grant and Allyson flew over to the other side of the river, while I simply ran across the surface (I was scared I wouldn't be able to do that). Afterwards, we traveled deeper into the Amazon. To be honest, I expected it to be more dangerous as we got closer to the stone, but everything was surprisingly calm. We traveled for about 10 minutes, until I felt such a huge surge of hate and violence, that I ordered the team to stop immediately while I shook of the feeling. Over in a small clearing surrounded by lots of trees, vines, and leaves, was a massive power signature, I could feel it affecting me. I knew immediately that we had found it, the stone of Ares was ours for the taking; and yet, something felt off. I telepathically ordered my team to slowly drift towards the clearing, and to not make any sudden movements. If only the clearing would have followed the same instructions. As soon as we got within 10 feet of the clearing, multiple, massive roars, erupted from under it, and a huge beast suddenly, burst from the ground. At first, I thought it was a bunch of monster cobras tangled together; if only it were monster cobras. Instead, when the massive school bus sized, necks unfurled, the image of a 20 foot tall, 5 headed-hydra, made of tree bark, vines, and pulsing with a mother load of war god energy, came together. Now I was freaking out.

The hydra's eyes were all blazing red fireballs, it's heads had massive obsidian teeth, and each head was snorting blood red fire. On the forehead of the middle one, was a gleaming red shiny dot, aka the stone of Ares. Well, at least we found it.

"_Guys," _I thought to Grant and Allyson. "_Don't freak out, I have a plan."_

"_Cut it to shreds, take the stone, and have a party back on the Helicarrier?" _Grant asked me.

"_Close," _I responded. "_You and I are gonna bust out our spears, we'll take out each of it's heads in Speed Mode, and then Allyson, who will be hovering high over the trees, will swoop down and burn the rest of it's body, sound good?"_

"_Why do I have to stay in the air?" _Allyson asked me_. "I can create a huge solar blade, swipe off all of it's necks with one swing, and then burn it to a crisp. If anything, i'm more useful in this fight than the two of you combined."_

"_True," _I told her. "_But we don't know how fast or powerful that thing really is. Plus, it can breathe fire, we can't take the risk off you getting burnt, crushed, or eaten. Super-G and I have the speed to pull this off, you'll be the blazing airstrike that'll finish the job."_

Allyson, smirked at the idea, and accepted her position with minimal grudging. Lucky for us, the Hyda was really courteous, and let us finish our mental planning. It seemed to be watching us with a challenging glare. It was definitely intelligent, and by the looks of it, knew exactly what it was dealing with; and it was very much pissed off. It's many heads seemed to be saying: '_Just try something, I dare you.'_ Grant and I carefully, inched slowly towards the Hydra, not bothering to summon our weapons, unless absolutely necessary. Finally, after we had taken our fifth step, the Hydra roared, charged at us, and spewed red fire from it's many heads.

Grant and I immediately went into Speed Mode, summoned our spears, and dashed to either side of the Hydra, while Allyson went airborne. Even in Speed Mode, the Hydra was pretty fast, I had to weave in and out of lots of trees to avoid the blaze, before running back towards it.

"_NOW SUPER-G!" _I screamed in his head. "_LET'S TAKE IT DOWN!"_

I raced towards the far Hydra head on the right side, while Grant simultaneously charged the left. I willed the tip of my spear to surge with thunder, did a running leap that propelled me 10 feet in the air, and slashed the head clean off of the Hydra; Grant also took off one of the Hydra heads with a leaping power slash. Before I could turn my attention to the other heads, I noticed something horribly wrong; even in Speed Mode, the Hydra heads were growing back impossibly fast, and yes, there were two more for each one cut off. The Hydra, now sporting nine horrible heads, snapped viciously at me and Grand with tremendous speed, I was lucky I didn't get snapped up; Grant wasn't. One of the middle Hydra heads managed to trap him in it's mouth for a short time, before he manually opened it's mouth from the inside out, cussing with the force of a thousand sailors. However, right before he could fly out, the Hydra head's mouth blazed with a ball of red hot fire, essentially frying Grant.

"SUPER-G!" I screamed out loud like an idiot.

Grant came flying out of the Hydra's mouth screaming: 'hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!', and engulfed in red flames. He did the smart thing and did the whole stop,drop, and roll routine, smoldering the flames. Afterwards, the Hydra charged at us again, and started snapping at us with the speed of a race car. We couldn't risk cutting it again, so Grant and I leaped backwards, dodging the heads, and trying to think of an effective plan. Then, out of nowhere, a giant bulldozer made out of Sun Energy, trucked the hydra from the right side and pushed it through a bunch of Amazon plant life before stopping, rising into the air, and smashing straight on top of the Hydra. A few seconds later, Allyson landed next to us; a very smug grin was plastered on her face.

"Cut off it's heads, and burn to a crisp huh?" she said to me in a super sarcastic tone.

Before I could say something smart like, 'yeah, whatever,' the Hydra, who was supposed to be a pancake, roared really loud, and got up with an indignant, and very pissed off look on it's many heads. It charged us again, it's many mouths blazing away.

"_SCATTER!" _I mentally screamed to the team, as the Hydra unleashed a red hot blast of fire.

Grant and Allyson soared to the right, and I sprinted to the left of the Hydra. We dodged it effortlessly, but I didn't count on it's recovery time. My Speed Sense kicked in, and when I turned around, one of the Hydra heads, was literally, a few feet away from my body, it's head open and ready to chow down on some Jason flesh. I sprinted forward, and took cover behind a large tree. Apparently, Allyson saw that I was in trouble, because when my Speed Sense wore off, the Hydra got blindsided by a giant solar fist, and flew sideways into another patch of trees. Before it could get up, I summoned another Mega Lightning Strike, which at this point, wasn't even too hard to do anymore, and blasted the hydra with at least a million volts of electricity. Before I could think something smug back to Allyson, the Hydra simply, got back up, roared really loud, and charged at us again.

At this point, I was the one who was pissed off. This monster had the stone my team had searched long and hard for, not to mention, left a wake of destruction through the Amazon, and he just wouldn't die. I didn't care if what I did would most likely kill me, I summoned my blade and counter charged the damn thing. I was in Speed Mode, so it wasn't like I was in too much danger but still, i'm pretty sure Grant and Allyson wanted to put me on suicide watch for the next few weeks. As soon as I got within a few feet of the Hydra, I slid on the ground, which probably would have left me with a serious grass burn had I not been wearing my battle suit, and while sliding, stuck my blade in it's underside and willed the blade to surge with a huge amount of voltage. My intention was to cook the Hydra from the inside out with my electricity, but I was going way too fast. Instead, I slid straight under the Hydra, cutting deep into it's under body and sliding to the other side. I quickly realized the the Hydra also had a tail, a huge tail, thicker and stronger than an oak tree. My Speed Sense kicked in as soon as I saw it, and even I could guess why; I was about to get crushed. I quickly kick flipped onto my feet, and although I could have simply ran away, I really wanted to do some damage to this creep. I side stepped the tail, activated my spear, willed the tip to surge with voltage, and when the tail hit the ground, I jumped and sliced it off.

The Hydra roared in what I guess was pain, assuming plants can feel pain. It turned around really fast, and it's faces said something like: '_No you did not_'. It was probably gonna do something like charge at me, or blast me with fire, or try to eat me, but before it could choose all of the above, Allyson did something really stupid for once. She thought that, just because the Hydra's attention was on me, it was somehow distracted. She created a giant Sun Blade took to the air, and willed the blade to fly through the Hydra's many necks; again that's how it it was supposed to go. Like I told her, the Hydra was way faster than it looked. The monster's far right head caught the blade in his teeth, and snapped it in half. Now that Allyson had it's attention, the Hydra faced her and reared it's heads back for a fire blast. I didn't know whether or not Allyson would be able to survive the blast up close, even in her sun form, but thankfully, Grant wasn't gonna take the chance. In an extremely fast blur, he tackled Allyson from the ground, and they soared 20 feet into the air, faster than a bullet. It was in that moment that I realized how much of an idiot-genius Grant was. Let me explain. At this point, it was painfully clear that the only way we'd be able to kill the Hydra was the traditional way, meaning we'd have to cut the heads and burn the stumps. The only problem with this was the fact that even in Speed Mode, the heads were growing back sooner than we could burn them. Then it hit me, we just needed to cut and burn faster.

"_Super-G, Sunbird, you two ok?" _I mentally asked them.

"_Yeah, were all good," _Grant responded. "_But man, is that thing strong or what?"_

"_Definitely bro but don't worry, I have a plan."_

"_What kind of plan?"_

"_Get me in the skies and I'll tell ya, this thing is looking at me funny."_

Grant swooped down in a second, grabbed me by the arm, and rocketed me into the sky. Once we were 100 feet up, he stopped next to Allyson, and she created a Sun Disc for me to float on. The Hydra was clearly indifferent towards this, because it just looked up at us with a WTF expression.

"So what's the plan bro?" asked Grant.

"Wait a minute," Allyson interrupted me before I could get started. "Why does he get to make the plan again? His last one ended in disaster."

"You can't win em' all Sunbird," Grant responded. "Besides, we're all in one piece, we're regrouping, and Thunder-Man is team leader. I have faith that this next plan is gonna be a home run."

Allyson obviously didn't like it very much, but she grudgingly agreed to hear me out.

"Ok," I started. "My first plan failed because every time Super-G and I cut off the heads, they grew back faster than we could keep chopping them off, but now I realize all we have to do is go faster; but we also have to do two things at once."

"What do you mean by that?" Allyson asked me.

"Me and Super-G are gonna slice off all of the heads in Speed Mode Supreme, while were doing that, you simultaneously have to blast the Hydra in a blaze of fire. We can kill it, but we have to be faster than it's regeneration process."

"But if you're in the way, you'll get burned."

"No we won't," said Grant. "I'm guessing Speed Mode Supreme is when you go really fast, and basically become a blur of lightning. While I think the name is stupid, I understand what he's talking about. Don't worry Allyson, we can move really really fast, you wouldn't be able to BBQ us even if you wanted to."

"Ok then," she said. "But i'll need you guys to keep it busy for a while. It won't take me long to get the blast ready, but i'll need it distracted; i'll signal you two when it's time."

"Sounds like a plan." I said. "Ready, Super-G? Our buddy looks pretty lonely down there."

Grant grabbed my arm and we both flew down to meet our flesh eating Hydra friend. Before reaching the ground, I summoned a Mega Lightning Bolt, and struck the Hydra dead in it's faces, giving Grant and I a good opening for a preemptive strike. After Grant put me on the ground, I created a giant electric sledgehammer for him to use, and he went to work. Because we only had to stall the Hydra, Grant was free to be reckless, but then again, he always was. For 2 minutes he wildly swung on the Hydra, knocking it's heads together, smashing it into the ground, and occasionally dodging blasts of fire. I just chilled behind a tree, and watched the show. Finally, Allyson gave us the signal that she was ready, and was on her way down. I figured we had about 5 seconds before she got at ground level, another 2 seconds to get into position, and an extra second for shooting. I ordered Grant to bust out his spear and get ready; I also summoned mine, and got back in the fight. We couldn't slash at it's heads yet, so for the most part, we played defensive. We kept backing up, and dodged the Hydra's strikes; sometimes, Grant would swat them away with the flat of his spear. We kept this up until Allyson reached ground level. After a three second count she screamed: "_NOW!" _into our heads; Grant and I went into Speed Mode Supreme.

I looked behind me for a quick micro sec and saw a huge, or what was soon to be a huge, blaze of golden fire erupting from Allyson's hands, slowly overlapping her body. Grant and I ran to either side of the Hydra and went to work. I went around the Hydra, jumped on it's body and ran across it's back until I reached it's necks. I slashed off the far left one, and immediately moved on to the second one, while Grant slashed off the two on the far right. Even in SMS, the stumps were already growing back. It was super slow, and moving at the speed of snails, but the necks were already growing back, plus extra ones; good thing we were moving faster than their regeneration process. Grant and I quickly slashed off the remaining three heads, and then, once the golden blaze was within a few feet of the Hydra, we ran behind Allyson, the safe zone, and shifted out of Speed Mode. In normal speed, the golden blaze quickly engulfed the remains of the Hydra, but Allyson didn't stop there. She kept the blaze going for like 5 more seconds, and then turned it off. In the aftermath, there was nothing left of the Hydra, but a few trees also took a bit of the damage. We searched around for the stone, and found it buried under a few inches of soil. However, before we could message to Fury about our success, something black and heavy hit us in the chest, and launched us backwards into a few trees. Once, I got over the shock of my Speed Sense not activating, I tried, I repeat, TRIED, to reach for my sword. I couldn't move, my body was encased in some type of dark black webbing, even Grant was having trouble getting free. Suddenly, I heard a loud raspy roar, and a few seconds later, Venom, as in Spider-Man's arch nemesis, Venom, busted through the greenery, and landed several feet from where we were trapped. Venom looked at us, tilted his head, and then started to survey the ground. He didn't say it directly, but the meaning was clear: '_I don't know you, I didn't expect to see you, but i'm busy right now, i'll deal with you later._' He scanned the ground until he found the stone, and picked it up. A red wave of energy flowed through him, and disappeared just as soon as it generated. Venom clutched his head, and, though he didn't show any signs of concentration, it was clear he was communicating with someone.

"Yes," he said in a deep raspy vicious voice. "I have it in my hands."

He paused again, listening to whatever it is the person he was talking to had to say.

"No, no trouble, bunch of plant animals got in my way, but I killed them, we got a situation though."

My heart started hammering in my chest, I knew what was coming up, and for the first time in a while, I was actually scared. Sure i've faced a few robots, took on some plant monsters, and beat up a few superheroes, but this was different. Venom, was a supervillain, as in, he would kill me, move on to the next day, and not lose any sleep over it. Yeah, the monster's could have killed me also, but they were just mindless creations, Venom was not. Anyway, Venom paused again for a few seconds.

"Some...kids" he finally said. "They have powers, and they look like S.H.I.E.L.D agents, should I take care of them?"

I heard Allyson struggle against her bonds.

"_Don't struggle," _I thought to her. "_Don't draw attention to yourself, we'll get out of this but we need to stay calm."_

"_Don't worry guys," _Grant thought to us. "_I pretty much tore through, the under layers of the webbing, it just looks like i'm restrained pretty good, if tar boy wants to get rough, he'll have to deal with me first."_

I suddenly felt so good, it was if a wave of pure relief washed over me, and I could suddenly think clearly again, all we had to do was play the waiting game. After, a few seconds, Venom finally spoke.

"Yes, alright, i'm on my way no-"

Suddenly, Venom shuddered, the wave of red energy coursed through his body again and this time, it was here to stay. His eyes turned blood red, his spider design on his body also turned blood red, and it's appendages started moving. His claws started to surge with blood red fire and he was breathing the same flames out of his mouths with each heavy breath. The black goo that he was made of started to shift and morph into different weapons of war. Sometimes a sword, sometimes an axe, but still meant for killing. Venom looked at us with an evil glare, and I knew we were in for a fight; it was unavoidable. The stone was nowhere to be found, probably absorbed into Venom's body, not a great sign.

"No," he said in a deeper, powerful, less raspy voice. "I will slaughter them, rip them to pieces, and gorge on their flesh."

Whatever the guy on the other end was saying, Venom interrupted him.

"NOOO!" he bellowed so loud, it would give the Hydra a run for it's money. "YOU DO NOT CONTROL ME DOOM, I WILL KILL, I WILL FEAST, I WILL HAVE BLOOD!"

Shadows formed in between his right hand. A second later, he was holding a black battle axe with red highlighted edges, just like the sword I saw in my vision. He raised his axe, and with the speed of a bullet, charged straight at me.


	9. Chapter 9: Venom vs Delta Force

**Chapter 9: Venom vs. Delta Force**

Why is it always me? Seriously, why is it that whenever we face a blood thirsty killer opponent, they always go after me? Is it because i'm team leader or something? Because if it is, I may seriously consider stepping down. Anyway, Venom, who was now a bloodthirsty maniac, or should I say EVEN MORE of a bloodthirsty maniac, was charging towards me with a battle axe made out of shadow, or something like that. Mrs. Kennedy said, our suits wouldn't be much help against magic metals, and i'm pretty sure this qualified as very magical. However, before Venom could get within 5 feet of me, Grant busted out of his bonds in a super heroic way, and flew into Venom like a cannonball, launching the two of them deep into the greenery. I could hear what I assumed to be Grant punching Venom, as well as Venom's raspy screams of pain. I took this time to try and get out of my own webbing. I fought and shook, even tried using my electric powers to fry it off; nothing worked. Just when I was about to summon a Mega Lightning Strike to try and get me free, via blasting my tree to cinders, Allyson flew over to help me out.

"Need some help?" she asked me in a super smug way.

"How'd you get out?!" I asked in a super surprised tone.

"I basically burned them off, as soon as I lit my body on fire, the webs just melted rather quickly to be honest."

"Awesome, now hurry up and free me, we gotta help Super-G!"

"Wait, what's the magic word?"

"Let me go because i'm team leader, and Super-G might die if we don't move our butts on the double?"

"Close enough," she said as she activated her Blazing Sun Form, and touched my webbing.

She was right about the 'rather quickly' part. As soon as she touched the webs, they not only melted, but quite literally, scrambled off of my body, like they knew what fire was, and did not like what it meant for their future. They only made it a few feet away, before they burned into nothingness, but still, kinda weird.

"Thanks," I told Allyson. "Now come on, Grant needs us, whether he knows it or not."

(Grant's Perspective)

You guys are so lucky. You know it costs 9.99 per month to have the WWE Network, and be able to watch awesome pay-per-view matches? Well get ready for a massive hero vs villain showdown, that should be 49.95 to see, hear, or even read, for free.

So basically, when Venom charged at Jason, I immediately sprung into action like the amazing super awesome hero I am. I broke out of my webbing, and while going at super speed (I refuse to call it Speed Mode or Comet Speed, maybe i'll name it later, something football related), I trucked Venom in the gut at the speed of a bullet, and we both hurtled further into the Amazon. While we were flying, I kept a hold of Venom with my left hand, and punched him multiple times with my right. At least 20 times in the face, 15 in the gut; I just didn't stop, I couldn't afford to. Now I know what you're probably asking, and the answer is yes, I was super afraid. I mean seriously, for all of my joking and humor, I was afraid I wasn't gonna walk away from this fight, I was afraid, I would fail Thunder-Man and Sunbird; these fears increased, due to the fact that I could actually be hurt now. But I wasn't gonna let that stop me. As a former quarterback, I was used to game day nerves, once you got in your zone, everything was fine. This was no different. As soon as I started punching, my objective wasn't about survival, but about winning. Anyway, after a few more punches, Venom started to fight back. He roared at me, and swept his left arm at my face. I easily blocked it, and countered it with another punch, but Venom clearly was not taking anymore. He started thrashing and swiping at me wildly, making it harder for me to hold on to him, and maintain my flight pattern. After he started biting at me with his massive jagged teeth, I decided to cut my losses. It's not that I was afraid the bites would hurt me, it's just, unless it's from a cute girl, biting is off limits for me. I punched him one last time in the face, threw him into the air, and faster than he could even blink, I flew 100 meters back, and flew back around, delivering a massive Super-G sized punch to Venom as a present. He must have really felt that punch, because his black goo kind of went all wild and disoriented as he soared backwards. By the way, I never mentioned it before, but I am way faster in the air than I am on the ground. Don't get me wrong, i'm pretty light on my feet when I need to be, but in the air, I was way faster, probably fast enough to give Jason a run for his money. Anyway, I flew in pursuit of Venom and when I caught up to him, I got the biggest/worst surprise ever. I had knocked him about half a mile backwards, in the middle of another river to be precise. At first I was confused, we had already crossed the river a while back, but then I remembered that the Amazon had lots of rivers snaking in and out of it; if only that was the most surprising part. Yeah, remember when I said I knocked Venom IN the middle of a river? You see, the thing about the word IN, is that it implies that he was submerged, or swimming in the water; which would have been pretty funny to see now that I think about it. No, when I caught up to Venom, he was hovering over the water, engulfed in a fiery red aura, like Goku in Kaio-Ken. He looked pissed off, but then again, he always looked pissed off. He didn't say a thing, he simply charged at me like a missile from hell.

The bad thing was, he was moving so fast, I couldn't block, dodge, or intercept him. He tackled me so hard and fast, the wind was knocked straight out of my lungs. We soared backwards along the length of the river for a few seconds as I desperately tried to get free. I punched and kicked the guy with everything I had, but at such high speeds, and close proximity, I couldn't land a really good blow; Venom on the other hand, had no problem landing hits. I punched him once in the face, and he raked his claws against mine, multiple times. Maybe it was because of the stone, or maybe Venom was that strong, but his slashes stung a lot. We continued this cycle for a few more seconds, until Venom got tired of it, and decided to finish me off. He held out his right hand, and a shadow axe with red highlights formed perfectly in it. The blade started to surge with war god energy, so even if it didn't kill me, this swing was gonna hurt me really, REALLY BADLY. I didn't wanna feel the pain I was set up to feel, so when he swung the at my face, I pulled off a really awesome/stupidly lucky move. I knew i'd never be able to summon my axe in time, and even if I could, I couldn't block his. There would be no way in the world I could dodge the swing, or block it with my arms, so I used Venom's own momentum against him, to save my butt. I quickly wrapped my arms around most of his chest, which probably would have felt gross if it was touching skin, and kneed him as hard as I could in the gut. It wasn't much, or at least not much to Venom (this would be enough to shatter your rib cage, and punch a hole through your chest), but it was enough to get me in the clear. Venom's grip on me slackened, and I was able to move my head just under the axe, as it made it's first round. Before he could come around for another swing, I punched Venom as hard as I could in the chest. He completely let go of me at this point, but I wasn't done yet. As he was flying over me, I grabbed hold of his right leg and took him for a Super-G sized spin. I swung him around for a few seconds, enough to disorient him, and let him go, launching him high into the air; I still didn't stop. I flew back another 100 meters diagonally upwards, and when I had gained enough speed, I turned around, and charged straight for Venom. This time, I intercepted him in midair with a brutal flying kick, and while he was shooting backwards, I caught up to him, cupped my hands together, and brought a hammer blow down, knocking Venom straight into the water. I had hoped that would be enough to put him out of commission, but two seconds later, I was sort of surprised to see him rising from the water, holding yet another shadow axe, and bellowing a massive war cry.

Dude, at this point, I was only thinking of two questions. How do I bench this guy for good? And where the living f%#^ were the rest of my team? Anyway, Venom was charging at me, but this time in was in slightly slower motion. I could tell he was moving sort of fast, but for some reason, I was seeing him in a slower frame. Now that I think about it, the whole world seemed to be standing still, like it was holding it's breath or something. I know Jason calls this his "Speed Sense" but I will have none of it. Timeout is a better reference, short, sweet, to the point, football related, and my new term for it, so you can just deal with that anyway you wanna. So like I said, Venom was charging at me, but because my body had called for a Timeout, he was moving through invisible Jello. Now I could have done any number of things. I could have flew around, and clobbered him from the back, I could have got a tree and beat him to a pulp with it, I could have tried digging into his goo for the stone, and cut off his power source. But because I was super impulsive, and frustrated, I did the one thing I know you all wanted me to do anyway. I summoned my axe, and charged him head on, roaring my own battle cry.

Either because my body was done with it, or the adrenaline from the charge had shut it off, I shifted out of Timeout, and Venom resumed his missile-like dash towards me. Luckily, I was soaring at him with just as much, if not more speed, so I was ready for impact. My first move was defensive, that's how I like to deal with one-on-one encounters. I let Venom swing at me first, and before the axe struck my face, I blocked it with my own. It was definitely by accident, because somehow, Venom's axe got tangled under the bottom hooks of my axe. I was surprised, but not surprised enough to where I didn't take advantage of a perfectly good fumble. I twisted like a torpedo, wrenching the axe out of Venom's control, and when I settled on the other side of him, I kicked him hard in the chest and assaulted him relentlessly with my axe. We went up, and up, me hacking away wildly at any part of him I could reach. My swings were fast, powerful, and realistically, should have shredded him to pieces, but somehow they didn't. It was like I was hitting a yoga ball with a stick, no matter how many times I swung at him, the axe didn't cut into him, it just kept making dull, but probably painful impacts. I kept up the assault for a few more seconds, and after realizing how useless it was, I decided to ditch it, and try something else. I didn't just stop and let Venom recover; that would be just plain stupid. Instead, I whacked him one last time, sending him high into the air, and before he could even think about recovering, I intercepted his flying body, and hit him in the back as hard as I could. I must have really put myself into that swing because this time, I heard a loud boom, and as Venom was shooting down into the water, his form went all disoriented again. I was starting to think that I had finally done him in on that last shot, but then I got pulled into another Timeout. Instead of Venom charging at me again, this time, dozens of constructs, made of red energy, and shaped like various weapons of mass destruction, were flying straight at me. From missiles, to grenades, combat knives, you name it, a red construct was there. At first I was shocked, but then again, it wasn't like this wasn't coming sooner or later. Anyway, the weapons were flying in every direction, even if I flew around to Venom, there would be no way I could get a clear shot from behind. Instead, since I can break through energy constructs, I hefted my axe, and soared directly ahead. Realistically, this was a stupid thing to do, but as you'll soon come to realize, i'm all about stupid. As I soared at Venom, I swung my axe back and forth, crushing the red constructs in my way, which were moving at the velocity of a speed walker compared to how fast I was going. I struck down a bunch of missiles, and dodged a lot of giant knives, but before I could get to Venom, he did something weird, or should I say, completely bad ass.

Before I could get to him, Venom started to glow with so much red energy, I thought he was gonna blow up; if only. He roared so loud, probably alerting the entire continent, and thrusted his hand in my direction. Suddenly, red energy crackled in his clenched fist, and half a second later, a red bolt of lightning, with enough energy to power a million schools, shot at me at the speed of…..well, a lightning bolt. By all circumstances, it should have pelted me in the face, but apparently I was having none of it. The lightning bolt was coming at me really slow, like a highly inflated balloon drifting across the air. I quickly raised my axe, and with all of my strength, hit the bolt with the flat of one of the blades, sending it right back at Venom. The bolt hit him with the force of a tank, and the explosion was nothing short of the boomage it would take to level a skyscraper. I was blown away several hundred feet, before managing to stop in midair. Even worse, that explosion actually hurt, like the way a punch in the chest by Mike Tyson might hurt for you regular types out there. It took a few seconds, but I was eventually able to get my bearings. As best as I could tell, I was still in the same place, just a little ways away from the starting point. Even better, there was no sign of Venom anywhere; a few sparks of red electricity were still sparking every few seconds, but tar boy was nowhere to be seen. I made the mistake of thinking that after an explosion like that, even he couldn't get back up. That was before the giant black hand grabbed me.

It wasn't Venom's hand. I knew that, because it had my entire body gripped in it's palm; only my neck and head were free. Also, this hand was made entirely of black webbing, and it grabbed me from under the river, like a poisoned geyser or something. If only that was the worse part; because for some reason, I couldn't get free. I tried struggling against the hand, but it was pointless, the thing was somehow too solid for me to struggle against, and yet not solid enough for me to really struggle against anything; it was almost like water condensed into a fist. I even tried flying out of the thing, but the grip was too strong to fight against, even for me. Suddenly, red electricity surged through the hand, it's energy microwaving me like a hot pocket. It was slightly shocking at first, but it gradually escalated into pure unbearable pain; I couldn't stop myself from screaming out. As if the situation couldn't get any worse, I could see Venom floating 50 meters away from me. He definitely got his bell rung from that blast; bits and pieces of his arms and legs were missing, but gradually regenerating. Now that I mention it, for a brief second or so, I saw something on, or should I say in, his chest that looked like skin, human skin, but that was impossible; from what i'd heard around school, Venom was some sort of alien. Anyway, in spite of the serious pain I was in, I still had enough of my wits about me to see him conjure up red missile stockpile, big enough to level NYC, in other words, I was in for a brutal beatdown. Venom had his arm raised, no doubt savoring the moment. However, before he could launch nuclear warfare on my face, two streaks of lightning, and golden light, pelted Venom in his side, and sent him soaring into the other side of the Amazon. The cavalry had arrived.

The pillar fist that had me locked down was obviously sustained by concentration, because when Venom took a dive, the pillar melted, and I was free to fly around as I pleased.

"_Thanks guys," _I thought to Sunbird and Thunder-Man. "_Just so you know_, _I had him on the ropes, I was just lulling him into a false sense of security. By the way, what kept you?"_

"_More monsters" _Sunbird thought to me. "_Plant gorillas ambushed us, I torched the lot of em'."_

"_And I helped!" _Thunder-Man indignantly thought to me.

"_Well thanks for the assist, but it's not over, this guy can seriously take a wallop; get ready."_

"_Get ready?!" _Thunder Man thought to me with a mental laugh. "_Dude, we just blasted him with like half a million volts, and a bolt of concentrated light, he can't be coming back, let's see if we can find the stone and-"_

Venom's gluttonous roar filled the air, like the screams of a cheerleader in a horror movie. One second later, he came charging out of the forest, blazing like the red Super Saiyan of hate he really was.

"_You were saying?" _I thought to Thunder-Man in the most douchiest way possible.

His face was just priceless, pure and simple, he straight up couldn't believe anything could come back from a blast like that.

"_WELL DON'T JUST FLOAT THERE LIKE AN IDIOT, LET'S GET HIM!" _he mentally shouted to me, and probably Sunbird.

I summoned my axe, and charged Venom again, this time, he was gonna face the full fury of Delta Force; don't worry, the name change will eventually happen.

The fight against tar boy started out with a bang. Literally. Venom conjured up another volley of red missiles, and hurled them in our direction. Realistically, the missiles probably would have hit us if Sunbird didn't step in; but before they could even get close to us, random sun shields bursted in every direction, taking the brunt of the missile barrage, and sending more off course from the explosions that were high enough to not be a danger to us. The few missiles that did manage to stay their course were easily dodged by Thunder-Man, who was running on water, and by Sunbird and I, who were basically human fighter jets. I managed to get to Venom first, and I made him suffer for that. I swung my axe sideways, aiming for his neck, and when he ducked, I kneed him hard in the chin. While he was stunned, I uppercutted him with my axe, sending him airborne. I didn't stop there, not by a long shot. I soared after him, raised my axe, and struck him hard in the back, sending him further down the river than I actually intended to. Luckily, Thunder-Man stepped in, to keep the torture chain going. He was standing on the river side while I was doing my thing, but that's understandable, poor guy couldn't fly, and not even he could run forever. Anyway, in super speed terms, he ran down the river, a lot farther than Venom actually would have landed, and when he came charging back, he had his spear in mid swing which was surging with way too much electricity to be legal. Looking back on it, I see why he did that. At the force Venom was falling at, Thunder-Man wouldn't have been able to swing on him without dislocating his shoulder, or losing his sword in the process. So, when Thunder-Man actually struck Venom with his spear, a huge bolt of lightning, shot out of the blade with a very loud BOOM! Venom went flying with a very loud RAAAAAARRRR…in a direct collision course with Sunbird! At such high speeds, Venom should have steamrolled her, but she must have had really good reflexes. Before Venom got within three feet of her, she yelped, thrusted her hands out, and a golden fiery fist, big enough to punch through and armored vault, shot out of the water and hit Venom like he was a volleyball. He shot up into the air with a loud SCREEEEEE!; he was also clearly messed up. I realized what Sunbird did was all reflex. Her face was all golden and full of shock, plus the water was boiling with enough heat to exterminate an entire legion of sea life. Besides, she put so much power into that shot, that Venom was literally falling apart. His black tar body was in disarray, and it was almost like his body was in living pain. Now that he was more exposed, I could confirm what I had originally thought before; Venom was a dude. Underneath all of that alien gunk, was a guy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and wearing some jeans and a black T-Shirt. Venom quickly recovered his armor, or liquid, or whatever, and start glowing again. This time, he wasn't messing around, he summoned multiple lightning strikes, and hurled lots of missile constructs at the team; it was all I could do to dodge, break, and deflect most of his strikes. Sunbird wasn't doing so hot either. She had pretty much given up on evasion, and was focusing solely on blocking all of Venom's attacks with her solar force field. How Thunder-Man was doing, I couldn't say, but due to the fact that I kept seeing streaks of lightning flying over the water, I took a wild guess and came to the conclusion that he was ok. I was about to try another frontal assault on Venom, but I guess Thunder-Man pretty much had that covered too. He stopped on the other side of the river and held his hands to the sky. All of a sudden, thunder clouds darkened the sky, almost to the point to where it was black. I'm pretty sure you know the rest, Venom got a Zeus sized lightning strike right in the face, that plummeted him straight into the water.

"_Guys, we gotta regroup and combine our efforts if we wanna take this guy down." _Thunder-Man thought to me and Allyson.

"_That's what i'm talking about!" _I thought back to him. "_So what's the gameplan, bro?"_

"_We gotta keep him off balance. Super-G, you and I gotta use our speed, get in close and strike hard, don't give him a chance to recover." _

"_And me?" _Sunbird asked him.

"_Your blasts have a really bad effect on him, we'll need that. Keep your distance, and when I give the signal, blast him with as many sun balls as you can. If that doesn't work, pelt him with as many constructs as you can, i'll help out if you need the extra firepower."_

The water lit up bright red, and Venom came screaming out of it, a battle axe in one hand, a ball full of red fire in another.

"SUPER-G!" Thunder-Man screamed aloud.

"I'M ON IT!" I screamed back, as I charged Venom for all I was worth.

Maybe it was because I was super high on adrenaline, or I had somehow managed to go into, i'll call it Blitz, but anyway, Venom was basically frozen in air. I summoned my axe and smashed his face in, sending him flying towards the water. This time however, I decided to give Venom a break, and spare him another river bath. Before he hit the water, I intercepted him, and hit him as hard as I could with my axe, sending him skimming across the surface.

"_NOW, SUNBIRD!" _I heard Jason mentally scream to Sunbird, as he rushed to help me beat Venom down.

She reacted really slow like, but after like two seconds in regular time, she blasted a wave of golden fireballs in our direction. The fireballs were moving so slow, it was like they weren't moving at all, but that was our advantage. Thunder-Man caught up to me, and together, we put the hurt on Venom. Thunder Man turned on his Voltage Fists, and started to beat the crap out of Venom's face and chest. Occasionally, he would run in a circle around Sunbird's fireballs, and return with a thunder charged flying kick. Simultaneously, I was just beating on Venom with my axe as hard, and as fast, as I could; occasionally stopping to charge up, and hit him with a power swing. Between the two of us, we hit Venom at least 400 times in under two seconds. Luckily, he couldn't move as fast as we could, or our combo streak would have been cut off a good while ago. Finally, after the third second, and about 400 more hits, I told Thunder-Man to get clear, while I helped Venom get more acquainted with Sunbird's powers. I flew around him, and hit him with the flat of my axe, knocking him backwards in a direct collision course with Sunbird's blasts, before getting clear of what was sure to be a major explosion. Thunder-Man and I slowed down enough so that we could get a better view of the big boom. In short, it was awesome! As soon as the blasts made contact with Venom, they went KA-BAAM! Golden fire spewed in every direction like a fireworks display, and Venom was launched upriver so fast, it would have given Quicksilver a run for his money. I quickly chased after Venom for two reasons. One, Sunbird's explosions had a weird effect on him, made his body lose it's form, and expose his human inside. Two, Venom had the stone of Ares, if I could just find out where it was, I could take it from him and maybe that would depower him just enough for the team to take him down. I mean seriously, without his speed, weapons, and constructs, he wouldn't even be fit for a punching bag.

To be honest, my plan probably would have worked, if not for the surprise blast. I caught up with Venom, who was now the guy with blonde hair, and black clothes. Now you got to realize, I was in Blitz, so there was no way he should have seen me coming, much less react to it. I saw the stone was locked in his right fist, and tried to grab it. I probably could have, and should have chopped his hand off, but there was no need to, and I didn't wanna be brutal about it. I grabbed for the stone, but before I could even touch the guy's hand, the air shimmered like a heat wave. When it cleared up, the guy had his fist on a direct collision course with my face; I was so surprised, I forgot to dodge. WHAM, BRAAAAAM! The most surprising thing was how much that hurt. As soon as the guy's fist hit my face, a wave of red lightning and fire, strong enough to punch through steel, erupted in my face and sent me soaring back to who knows where. After a few seconds, the wave dissipated and I plopped into the water. My face was hurting so much, I wondered if it was damaged. I wanted to move, but it was like the message wasn't traveling fast enough to my body. My movements were sluggish and slow at best, but there was no way i'd get above water on my own. Lucky for me, I didn't have to. The water suddenly became so bright, I thought I had died and went to heaven. Don't worry ladies, it wasn't so. It felt like a giant hand had reached down, and was pulling me upwards. A second later, I came out of the water, coughing, sputtering, and completely disoriented. I heard Sunbird singing, and I felt my body warm up. A few seconds later, my vision cleared, and I found myself on the grass by the river. Sunbird was breathing heavily, and her eyes were so wide with worry, fear, and relief, it was a wonder they didn't roll out of her sockets.

"You ok, Super-G?" she asked me in an extremely out of breath voice.

"I'm fine, thanks to you," I responded. "But where's Venom and Thunder-Man?"

She pointed upriver, but I still couldn't see them; then I remembered Thunder-Man's speed. I concentrated on seeing faster, and suddenly, Thunder-Man and Venom were as clear as day, like the world flicked a switch on a PowerPoint or something. Let me tell you something: Never piss Thunder-Man off. Ever. The guy was an electric beatdown machine, knocking Venom with Voltage Fists at speeds so fast, he had to be in SMS; plus he was swearing so much, it'd make an old lady feint. He did a backflip, hitting Venom in the face, and sending him airborne with a bolt of lightning that ejected from his feet. Thunder-Man stopped on top of the water and jumped. As he did, two huge bolts of lightning erupted from his feet, and propelled him high into the air. Thunder-Man proved he was just as capable of handing out beatdowns in the air just as easily as on the ground. He created two huge lightning fist constructs, and started to beat the hell out of Venom. Somehow Venom managed to recover, and stopped Thunder-Man's lightning fists with his own, made of red lightning. That didn't stop Thunder-Man at all. He yelled really loud, and his lightning constructs exploded, knocking Venom further away, but sending him sailing towards the ground. While falling, Thunder-Man managed to summon a volley of missile, swords, arrows, etc., in the form of lightning constructs, and sent them flying towards Venom. They hit him with the force of a truck load of bombs, and when he fell down, he plopped into the water again. Thunder-Man on the other hand, managed to land perfectly on the water, and run to where Sunbird and I were.

"Dude, are you good?" he asked me.

"Fine bro," I said. "But, so is he."

I pointed to the sky, where Venom was floating a good 200 meters in the air, seething with rage.

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!" he shouted at the top of his unearthly lungs. "I WILL NOT BE DENIED YOUR BLOOD, MORTAL CHILDREN! COME TO ME MY SERVANTS OF WAR, GIVE UNTO ME MY FEAST!"

He stretched his hands out, and from nowhere, a layer of black tar spread over the water, and both sides of the greenery flanking the river. Venom thrusted his hands downward, and the tar plunged into the water, and into the forest. At first, nothing happened, and I was about to make a smart joke before resuming the ass kicking assault on Venom. But that was before everything went red. Literally, the water turned bright red, like neon lights were at the bottom of the river. On either side of the river, bright red lights blazed deep in the greenery, and I knew without a doubt that something bad was coming for us. It took a few seconds, but after that, I heard multiple roars, and the threat showed itself. They were humanoid, but barely. Each of them were 8 feet tall, made completely of Venom's tar, and glowing red hot with war god energy. They had razor sharp talons, but as far as I could see, had no weapons. There had to be at least 1000 of them in total, but even that wasn't scary, we'd dealt with more than this; Venom was gonna have to seriously step up his game if he wanted to take us down.

"KILL THEM!" he roared. "DELIVER THEIR CORPSES TO ME!"

Thunder-Man and I immediately tapped into our respective super speed powers, only this time, we weren't alone. Sunbird stood next to us in her Sun Form, a mixture of smugness and seriousness on her face.

"What?" she asked us in a sarcastic tone. "You didn't seriously think i'd let you two make another battle plan without me, did you?

"Ha ha," Thunder-Man recovered. "Now seriously, we need to focus. Super-G, take the ones on the other side of the river, chop em' to pieces. Sunbird, blaze a trail up the river, torch the lot of em'. As for me, i'll take these...things over here."

He electrified his sword.

"Ready, team?" he asked us.

"Ready." Sunbird and I said at the same time.

"Alright then, let's go!" he said, as he charged to meet the oncoming legion of tar monsters.

Sunbird and I raced to our battle positions as well.

So, I wanna say that everything went according to plan, but of course nothing usually does for our team; good thing we do improv really well. I flew to the other side of the lake, and started hacking away. At first, I actually thought I was making progress, because when I slashed my axe through the bodies of the tar monsters, their bodies went all disoriented, and it seemed like they were dying. Meanwhile, and at the same speed, Sunbird was going upriver, a blaze of golden fire erupting from her hands and melting all tar monsters in contact to sludge. I couldn't exactly see Thunder-Man in the midst of the battle, but it was safe to say that he was taking it to his side of the monsters as well. After a full minute of running, I started to slow down; seriously, going at super speed is not as easy as it looks, you gotta really be ready for it. Anyway, it was during that time that I realized two things. A: none of the monsters that I had slashed through actually died, they just looked like they were. B: apparently there were more monsters coming through than we actually thought, because all of a sudden, I was up to my neck in tar monsters that were overflowing from the woods. From up above, Venom was starting to realize that his tar monsters were not getting the job done. He roared really loud, yelled something evil and Shakespearean, and charged Sunbird dead on. At first I thought she was gonna need some help, but she surprised both Venom and myself, when she uppercutted him with the biggest fire fist construct, sending him soaring upwards, screaming and melting. Sunbird didn't stop there, she created two huge Sun Swords, and charged Venom, who had recovered enough to create two red battle axes, and charge her too. For a while, the two fought in the air, like two Super Saiyans with weapons of war. Meanwhile, I was still figuring out how to stop an oncoming army that was immune to axe slashes. I went into Blitz Extreme again, which is basically the super and more awesome version of SMS, and went to work. I was hoping that somehow, my redoubled efforts would somehow transfer into actual success; needless to say, that wasn't the case. I slashed, hacked, and batted away as many enemies as I could, but it still wasn't enough; at best, I was just stalling them. Finally, after I was literally running on water, trying to hold my own against the tar monster onslaught, I asked for help.

"_THUNDER MAN, SUNBIRD, I CAN'T HOLD EM', I NEED HELP!_" I mentally screamed to them.

"_GET IN LINE DUDE!" _Thunder Man screamed back. "_I'M UP TO MY NECK IN WHATEVER THESE THINGS ARE!"_

"_Ugh, you two are hopeless." _Sunbird thought to us in and oddly calm voice for someone who was fighting a war crazed super villain.

"_You think you can do better?!" _I thought back to her.

"_Trade places with me for a few seconds, and we'll see."_

Quicker than a second later, Venom got hit in the side of his head with my axe, and went tumbling through the air. Sunbird smirked at me, and rolled her eyes.

"_You can let me take it from here, Thunder-Man," _Sunbird mentally said to him. "_I got them covered."_

Thunder-Man didn't object, and suddenly a flash of lightning shot downriver, quicker than the eye could follow.

"It's all you sweetheart." I told Sunbird.

"Never call me sweetheart." she told me, before she went all apocalyptic on Venom and his army.

She raised her hands in the air, and screamed really, really loud, which by the way, I wish she would have warned me about, because her scream was like an army of starstruck fangirls. After I got over the initial scare of me permanently losing my hearing, I pretty much had a heart attack, after seeing what Sunbird had done. Basically, an actual sun, about the size of several mansions stacked on top of each other, materialized out of nowhere. Seriously, a blazing sun with enough heat to melt an entire rainforest, just popped out of nowhere; if you can look at that, and not freak out, i'll buy you lunch at a five star restaurant. I could feel the intense heat resonating off of the massive fireball of death, but it's heat didn't affect me whatsoever. The same principle applied to the gravity the thing had. It had enough gravity power to swallow an entire skyscraper and I could feel that force, could feel that it was there, but it didn't effect me in the slightest. I bet Venom and his possy wishes they could say the same thing. The hundreds and hundreds of monsters were snatched from the ground, as if there was a hook attached to their backs. They were sucked into Sunbird's sun at the speed of a bullet, and burned into nothing; poor things never stood a chance. Venom on the other hand, was a different story. For some reason, he was resistant, not immune, to Sunbird's sun. His red aura was blazing like crazy, as he tried desperately to avoid being oven roasted; the scary thing was that he was actually succeeding. Sunbird grunted, clenched her fists, and the gravity of the sun cranked up to maximum, as in, if she was aiming for me, i'd probably get the sun burn of a lifetime. Venom started to slowly get pulled into the sun, but I could tell Sunbird was at her limit, eventually she would tire out, leaving Thunder-Man and I to fend for ourselves. Apparently Venom was starting to realize this, because he started to talk mad #^!+ to Sunbird.

"IS THAT THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO LITTLE GIRL!?" he bellowed at her. "ALREADY YOUR POWER BEGINS TO FADE WENCH, AND I WILL REVEL IN THE TASTE OF YOUR BLOOD, AND THE SOUND OF YOUR SCREAMS, AS I TEAR YOU AND YOUR DOGS ASU-ARRRGGGHHH!"

Whatever else that douchebag was gonna say, it was abruptly stopped by the impact of my axe being thrown in his face. Maybe it was the fact that he was trash talking one of my teammates, or maybe the war god energy was getting to me again, but I was ready to go ham and straight up tackle Venom into that sun myself. Luckily, I didn't have to. Apparently, Thunder-Man was waiting somewhere nearby, because all of a sudden, a huge bolt of lightning pelted Venom in the chest, and shot him straight into Sunbird's sun. She roared in her own way, and the sun transfigured from a ball of flame, into a stream of flame, that was roaring into the sky, and probably creating another hole in the ozone layer. After like 5 seconds of straight charbroiling, Sunbird cut off the mega furnace; I just managed to catch her, as her Sun Form flickered off and she fell.

"Whoa there," I said to her as I set her gently on the ground. "You alright, Sunbird?"

"Yeah, yeah, i'm fine, don't worry about me," she said. "It's just, that was the biggest thing i've ever made, the toll was just a little shocking for my body, that's all."

"Are you gonna be ok?" Thunder-Man asked her, once he zoomed to our location. "I mean, are your power reserves severely depleted?"

"No," Sunbird almost snapped at him. "Most of that sun I made was taken from the light and heat that was already in the atmosphere. I definitely put a lot of my own power into it, but it's nothing I can't get back, especially with this battle suit."

"Ok then cool." I said quickly, because whatever the deal was with them, we needed to avoid it, and settle it later. "Well then, all that's left is to start searching for what's left of that guy, and get the s#####!+++++++++!"

Yeah, the reason for that long drawn out swear word, was the fact that our problem wasn't over yet. You see, after that major furnace blast, there was a lot of smoke in the air, almost blocking out everything in sight. The smoke had just cleared, and hovering in the air, was the one person who I really didn't wanna see right now: Venom. He had a flickery red circular aura around his body, that was on the verge of collapsing. Immediately I knew what happened. Somehow he managed to get a force field around himself, and somehow through an amazing amount of willpower, managed to keep it up through the sun, and the furnace bast. He was now hovering in the air, clearly winded and pissed off, but still very much combat ready. He didn't say anything, but he was seething in rage, and It was pretty clear about what he was thinking on the inside: '_I am going to kill you all_'. Finally, after what had seemed like forever, Venom roared louder than he ever had, and the Amazon went to hell. Roaring red fires raged deep in the forest, yet somehow, there was no smoke rising from the flames. I didn't notice them coming until it was too late, and if it wasn't for Sunbird's quick thinking, the team would probably have been overwhelmed. Out of nowhere, another thousand tar monsters materialized out of nowhere, but this time, these suckers were ready for war. They were either carrying pure black blades, AK-47s, or had super elongated claws that could tear a grizzly bear to shreds. The swarm closed in on us from all ends, and had us surrounded in a matter of nanosecs. Luckily, they were unpleasantly surprised with spontaneous combustion. That's what happens when you run face first into a barrier made of golden fire. Sunbird was buying us some time, which meant we had to come up with a plan, as in fast.

"Guys!" she said through strained words. "We have to finish this now, he's just toying with us at this point.

"You're right," said Thunder-Man. "We won't be able to hold out for much longer, he's starting to break our strategy down, we need to take him out on the next attack, or else it's all over."

"Then what's the plan, bro?" I asked him. "I see you got one in the works, so let's hear it."

Thunder-Man shifted into his "Speed Mode", so I did the same, and turned on the Blitz. Everything else, including Sunbird was moving at the speed of snails, even Venom was frozen in mid Hitler shout. Smart move on his part, Sunbird could only give us so much time, we had to make every nanosecond count.

"We have to get him away from the stone." he said. "But the only way to do that is to get to the man inside; how can we get in there?"

"Well he's vulnerable to Sunbird's fire attacks," I said. "Maybe she can catch him by surprise and blaze his armor, or whatever that is right off, of him."

"That might be able to work, but it would take way too long, we'd be overwhelmed by then, unless you and I wield some of her Sun Blades, and stall all of these goons."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"Only for a short time. With all of these attackers, we'd have to be running at Speed Mode Supreme-"

"Blitz Extreme," I interrupted him. "That's what i call it.

Thunder-Man face palmed me, which I admit was not undeserved.

"Ok then," he said in a super annoyed tone. "We both would have to run really, really fast just to keep these things off of her, and even we can't run forever, besides, Venom would be all but expecting Sunbird's attacks, and we've seen first hand how he can resist and block her powers, the fight would be 50/50 at best, we need a sure shot victory charge. Wait a sec, you held Venom off for a good while, did you ever do something that gave you the drop on him for a bit?"

I thought for a millisec before saying-

"Whenever I punched him really hard, his armor thingy would go haywire, the same way it does when Sunbird torches him."

And just like that, as if delivered by from Heaven, we both got the same idea, like we were in sync with each others thoughts, which technically we were.

"So if you-" said Thunder Man

"While she-" I said.

"While I-"

"We got this bro!"

I dapped him up, and we both slowed down to tell Sunbird our genius, no-way-it could-fail, super plan.

"_We have a plan Sunbird!" _Jason thought to her.

"_Already?!" _she thought back in disbelief. "_That was like half a second."_

"_Gotta love super speed, now listen up, we gotta get this right."_

Thunder-Man thought the plan as quickly, and as simply as he could to her. Luckily, she caught up to speed really fast, and we were ready to deploy in no time. Naturally, this is where things would start to go wrong for us. Apparently, Venom got tired of watching his foot soldiers burn, because he started using a more direct approach. A really heavy impact struck Sunbird's barrier, nearly breaking it. Luckily, Sunbird held up; however, that still didn't stop Venom from trying again. He struck the barrier with lightning strikes again, and again; five times in total. The pressure from the assault was so much, that for the first time, Sunbird actually cussed.

"DAMN IT, JASON!" she roared. "GET THIS BASTARD OFF OF ME!"

Thunder-Man didn't need to be told twice. He raised his hand, brought it down with a roar, and Venom was struck over the head with a massive lightning strike, that could probably level a skyscraper.

"NOW!" Jason roared. "LET'S DO IT!"

Allyson thrusted her hands out with a yell, that sounded more like relief than aggression, and the barrier exploded into a fiery blast wave, that incinerated at least 200 tar monsters. On that positive note, I took to the air, and soared as fast as I could away from the battle.

(Jason's perspective)

Some fight huh guys? The sad part is, it's almost finished. By the way, don't worry about Grant flying away like a little baby pee pants, it's all part of the plan. Anyway, after Grant took off, Allyson gave me the tools I would need to help me complete my part of the operation. Immediately, two Sun Blades, that blazed with golden fiery deadliness, materialized into my hands. I gave Allyson one last look of encouragement, and we both charged at our respective enemies. Me for the 1000+ black gooey monster army, Allyson for the main man himself. I can't tell you exactly how her fight was going, but from what I could see, she was holding her own pretty well. As for me? Well, I was getting around. With my Sun Blades in hand, I ran from end to end of the river, slashing down anything that crossed my path. In a matter of a second I had already taken down 300 monsters, and I just kept on going. I didn't bother wasting any time or energy calling in lightning strikes, or thunderstorms, or anything like that. It was clear that my speed, plus these blades, were all that I needed to get the job done. Besides, with all these monsters running amok, plus Venom and Allyson fighting in the background, I needed to keep all of the power I could store, for emergency situations only. I kept up my pace, not too fast to where i'd be burning more energy than I could regenerate, but fast enough to where everything was slow enough for me to have a decent control over the battlefield. I managed to catch a glimpse of Allyson, who was busy punching Venom's lights out. Weirdly enough, I was more worried about Venom than about her. Allyson had proved she was more than capable of stepping up to a challenge on her own. Given enough time, she probably could have taken Venom out on her own. Lucky for Venom, we wouldn't be finding out today. Two minutes. Two minutes and thirty seconds tops, but sooner rather than later, this fight was going to end, with us as the victors. Allyson just needed to hold him off for a little bit longer.

(Allyson's Perspective)

Hey readers, it's me again. So, let's do a review shall we? Grant just took off to only God knows where. Jason was zipping to and fro, slashing down bloodthirsty black slime monsters, who wanted to rip me to shreds, and I was battling for my life against one of Spider-Man's most deadly foes, who just so happened to be possessed by the stone of the Greek war god. I really need to rethink my life at some point, I can't see how it got this chaotic.

I turned on my Blazing Sun Form, as Grant and Jason like to call it, and made a beeline for Venom himself. Ironically enough, even in the face of certain death, I wasn't really afraid. Besides, the only thing Venom had proven so far, was that he was all talk, and little muscle; I could totally take him. He saw me coming, and I swear his face kinda morphed into some kind of smirk, like he expected, and wanted me to attack him; that didn't make me feel any better. Venom took the first move of the match by summoning a volley of swords, missiles, and red thunderbolts to hurl at me. I didn't even flinch at this amateur move. I concentrated for a second, and blocked all of his moves with various shield constructs, and charged him dead on with a speed of a comet. By the way, for those of you that are going all, '_there is no way she can be that powerful_', well you're both wrong and right at the same time. If you think that I created all of those shields, which were like 20 in total, of my own stored power, then you're wrong. True, I could have done this, but there was no need. You see, another aspect of my powers is that I can manipulate light and heat that is already in the atmosphere, and completely leave my energy reserves untouched. It takes a bit of concentration to pull off, and in truth, I had only just perfected it when I created that massive death sun, but yeah, after I had gotten that down, blocking Venom's attacks was nothing more than predicting where the constructs would be, and manipulating the light in that area to harden into shields; cool huh?

Moving on to the fight. Now I could have matched Venom blow for blow, and summoned my own construct attack volley, but that would be pointless. Venom had at least proven his skill with ranged combat, at best, i'd be able to stall him for just a little while, before the collateral damage of our power battle, blew a hole in the Amazon. Besides…I couldn't risk hurting Jason. Instead, I created flaming boxing glove constructs around my fists and charged Venom again. This time, I didn't give him any room for defense; I shifted into Comet Speed, and struck Venom as hard as I could in the face with a right hook. By the way, I wasn't stupid enough to believe that I could actually take Venom on based on my strength; i'd leave that to Grant. Instead, I willed my constructs to give off an explosive charge with every impact. Not only would this give me a fighting chance in a fist fight, but the explosive fire would burn away parts of Venom's skin, and keep him off balance. For about 10 seconds, this was actually working. I assaulted Venom with enough fiery jabs, uppercuts, and hooks, to knock out a UFC fighter; unfortunately it wasn't enough. True, my punches were deteriorating Venom's outer skin, one time I punched him so hard in the face, that the goo flew completely off, revealing the guy inside's face. I once blew his shoulder completely off, and I had punched him so many times in the chest, it was a miracle I didn't ever get deep enough to actually reach the guy inside. But the thing was, all of this was just slightly off-balancing him, if anything, I was just a minor nuisance. After a few more seconds, Venom managed to catch my right hand in mid punch, as well as my left when I tried to get out of his grip. Naturally, i'd be screwed, but I willed my hands to blaze with so much golden flame, that Venom's arms literally burned off, forcing him to retreat.

I couldn't give him a chance to recover, so I created a Blazing Mega Sun Sword, and flew in pursuit. By the way, when I put Mega in front of a Sun construct, it basically means the construct is so big, that I have to control it mentally. So yeah, I was not playing around. I flew at Venom as fast as I could, which by the way, was not near Comet Speed, but hey, when you're maintaining a giant golden fire sword that can slash through buildings like butter, while simultaneously willing two smaller ones to remain in the hands of a lightning speedster, it puts a hamper on how fast you can fly. Anyway, I was just within slashing distance, when Venom noticed me, but by then it was too late for him to counter attack, the blade was already in motion. Instead, a giant red shield blocked my strike, and just managed to save him from being a sushi roll. I slashed at him for five seconds, hammering furiously at his shield. Finally, after hitting the shield six times, I hit the shield one more time, and it shattered like glass. Venom tumbled downward through the air, and although he was disoriented, apparently, it was enough time for him to create a giant red sword, and counter charge me with a huge roar. The sight of that was enough for me to nearly lose concentration, but I didn't, I'd be dead if I did. As he slashed at me, or should I say as his sword slashed at me, I willed mine's to parry the strike, and the fight was on. We went back and forth in the air, commanding our blades to slash, block, and stab each other relentlessly; eventually I decided to end the standstill. You see, I was secretly, building up enough energy to make a power blast, enough to melt the very slime from Venom's body, all that was left was for me to get close enough so that it wouldn't miss. At that very moment, Venom willed sword to slash at me in a downwards strike; a perfect opportunity. I willed my blade to counter slash at his, but I put a lot more force into it. The result wasn't as favorable as I expected, but I managed to keep his blade away from me long enough to get into Comet Speed, and fly as close as I could get to him. Once I was one foot away from him, I unleashed the power I had built up, in a massive and powerful Blazing Sun Blast. Unfortunately, I didn't get the desired result. Just so we're clear, the desired result was Venom's black skin being violently melted from his body; yeah that didn't happen. Somehow, Venom managed to get faster in less than half of a second. In that short span of time, he saw my blast, raised some sort of protective body shield around himself, and took the entire blast point blank. Just so you get the full gist, this blast had enough power to blow a hole through 20 titanium walls, melt the Statue of Liberty like butter, and make the combined heat from 10 volcanoes seem like a spring evening. Yet somehow, it couldn't even phase a guy who was specifically vulnerable to fire; believe it or not, my job actually gets WORSE than this, trust me. Anyway, for five straight seconds, Venom just took the blast head on. Once my power had ran out, Venom roared at me, and a red bolt of lightning shot out of his mouth, hitting me dead in my chest.

At first, I couldn't feel anything, but that probably meant that I was in so much pain, my body couldn't process it immediately. The lightning bolt hit me so hard, I was shot out of the sky at like 100 mph, and hurtled straight into the water. At first, I thought that the bolt would propel me so far into the water, that I would drown; but just as soon as I hit the water, the force of the bolt had suddenly stopped. Like I said, I was in pain, but my body chose to realize that after a few more seconds. It was like an anvil, plus a fifty pound boulder, had dropped on my chest. Every breath would hurt if I wasn't holding it, and even that was torture. It was too wet underwater for me to activate my Blazing Sun Form, but I could at least activate my regular Sun Form; that's what i'll call them when I alternate. Anyway, I managed to work through the pain, and fly my way up to the surface. By the way, I think it's worth mentioning that while in my Sun Forms, I have an infinite air supply, I was never really in any danger of drowning, as long as I got my Sun Form up and running again. Once above the surface, I saw something so mind bendingly impossible, I thought I was suffering from blunt force trauma or something. Lightning, as in thunderstorm level lightning, was streaking up and down the water, as well as in and out of the Amazon; it was a miracle I wasn't electrocuted. I could see that in my slight absence, the number of monsters had increased; but somehow, that didn't matter. Anytime the lightning bolt sped across anything, the monster was blasted with a runoff lightning blast, and shot so far into the Amazon, it would take them at least ten minutes to get back. By the way, this process was happening at least 50 times over in the course of a second, so while the battle field was slowly and steadily being overrun, the lightning bolt was keeping them at bay. More than that, Venom was being pummeled. At this point, I had pretty much knew that Jason down there causing all the commotion, and boy was he raising something bad. It was like Venom was getting hit 100 times by an invisible man, who was immune to exhaustion. Once or twice every other 5 seconds, Venom would manage to break away, and try to blast Jason down; but every time he tried, he was either struck from above with lightning, or hit in the chest with random lightning constructs. I didn't know how Jason was doing it. He was running faster than I had ever seen him run before, but he should have run out of energy a long time ago. Whatever he was doing, I had to stop him, get him to slow down; because as impressive as it was to see him take on and army by himself, I knew the effort to do what he was doing was killing him, I had to get him to turn it down a few notches, before he ended up hurting himself. Now that I think about it, I was slightly put out that he didn't try to save me, but then again, electricity and water don't mix well when they involve people who can be shocked to death; like me for example.

"_THUNDER-MAN!" _I mentally screamed to him.

"_SUNBIRD!?" _he mentally screamed back with so much worry and relief, I almost forgave him for not trying to save me. "_ARE YOU OK, ARE YOU HURT!?_

"_I'm fine, but you need to slow down, you're gonna hurt yourself!"_

"_I can't, these guys are spawning like flies, without your Sun Blades, I can't keep em' down for very long!"_

"_I'll make some more for you, then i'll get back to pummeling Venom, just slow down before your legs explode, you moron!"_

"_Ok, geez why you gotta be so rude?! By the way, where in the world is Super-G, he should have been back by now!"_

The million dollar question.

"_We can't worry about that right now," _I thought back to him. "_Right now, we need to focus on staying alive, Super-G will show up. When that will be is debatable, but he will show up, we gotta trust him."_

"_Yeah," _Thunder-Man thought to me. "_Ok cool, let's do that. By the way, are you sure you're up for Round 2 with ooze boy? I can take him if you need me to."_

"_No, i'm fine," _I thought back with a mixture of indignation and gratitude. "_My suit pretty much healed me, what with all this extra solar energy coursing through me; besides I have a score to settle."_

"_Ok then, Sunbird, do your thing, but can I get those Sun Blades first? My legs are starting to go numb."_

I created two Blazing Sun Blades over the surface of the water, which disappeared as quickly as they were made. A second later, the huge lightning bolt that was thundering across the waters, gradually ebbed down into a simple streak of voltage. Still faster than the eye could clearly see, but at least slow enough to know that the runner wasn't in danger of blowing his legs out. All that was left, was for me to face Venom again. I looked directly forward, and found him looking straight at me, his long snake like tongue licking his jagged teeth, like he was looking at a meal. This time he didn't get to roar, I had that covered. Well it wasn't really a roar, so much as a screech. I got really angry, and started to glow even more than I already was. When I screeched, the sound was so loud, it was like a nail on a chalkboard X50. Almost all of Venom's oncoming monster's were destabilized, leaving them all to vulnerable for Thunder-Man, who obviously wasn't feeling the effects of my screech. Venom on the other hand, was getting the full effect. His body was basically jumping apart, leaving the blonde guy exposed periodically. I summoned my swords, my actual Vibranium/Adamantium ones, connected them at the ends, and willed them to expand into my double bladed spear. Unfortunately, Venom had found a solution to my screech. Apparently, his red body shield was strong enough to block out sound, because once he managed to get it up and running, his skin stabilized, and stayed that way. I stopped screaming, it was useless anyway, and rotated my spear around, to get the feel of it. Again, I took Kung-Fu since I was six, I learned how to fight with a staff during that time, and this was just a staff that happened to have two blades attached to each end; not a big difference. Venom looked at my spear and tilted his head. Almost as if in a challenge, he created a huge black sword with jagged edges and red highlights. I activated my Blazing Sun Form, willed my spear to blaze with golden fire, and with a slight growl, charged Venom head on.

Like the war crazed idiot that he was, he counter charged me with a mother of all battle roars. Before crashing into each other, I turned in a circle while in midair, giving off the illusion that I was gonna slash at Venom. Instead, Venom was completely blindsided when a Sunspot materialized over the face of the water, under his general area, and shot him with a high pressured blast of golden fire. The Sunspot blasted him like twenty feet into the air, giving me the perfect opportunity to strike. I shifted into Comet Speed, and flew after him. As far as I could tell, the blast hadn't really damaged his body shield much, so it would be up to me to wear it down. In Comet Speed, Venom was pretty much a sitting duck, especially since he was off balance. I flew after him, and slashed at him with my spear, making sure to charge the spear heads with explosive energy to further off balance him. For about two seconds in real time, I flew back and forth slashing as often and as hard as I could at Venom, slowly and steadily wearing his shield down with 100+ slashes. Just as I was about to deliver the final blow, that was sure to leave him vulnerable, he regained his balance, and unleashed a powerful wave of blood red flames, that would have blown me back to the States if I didn't create a barrier around myself. Venom, who was now matching my speed, charged at me with yet another roar. This time, I charged him back, and we both engaged in a heated sword vs spear conflict. Venom slashed at me horizontally, like an untrained idiot, and I simply flew above his head, flipped in midair, and hovered just behind his back.

What? You thought I was going to fight him head on? Yeah, like I said, i'll leave the stupid stuff to my other teammates. Anyway, Venom quickly turned around with a slash. This time, I simply ducked, and while coming up, slashed my spear vertically, hitting Venom in the face with an upward slash, that was followed by a backflip kick. While he was stunned, and after I recovered from my backflip, I grabbed my spear with two hands, willed the fire on the spear to blaze even more, and spun like a ballerina tornado, slashing Venom in the chest so many times that he should have been little bitty pieces. How many times did I slash him exactly? Well, let's just say it was more than 30; that'll put it in perspective. Anyway, after I was pretty sure I had reached the low 70's I stopped suddenly, grabbed my spear like a baseball bat, and hit him in the head, willing all of the built up energy in my spear to explode right in his face. The blast was so strong, two huge waves rushed across either side of the river, I kinda laughed at the thought of Jason getting a river bath; yeah, I might be a horrible person. Anyway, Venom rocketed into the air at like 120 mph, not very fast, should have put a little more torque in my swing. I soared after him, willed my spear to blaze with another wave of golden fire, and resumed my spear attacks. I assaulted Venom with a volley of stabs, slashes, kicks, and a giant flaming fist for good measure. I didn't stop there. Venom's shield was still operational, but flickering, I had to take it out while he was still out of it. I created two Blazing Mega Sun Fists, and kept the assault up, hitting Venom as many times as I could with the floating fists of doom, and stuff like that. After twenty consecutive hits, I willed the fists to launch him at like two missiles, knocking him further down river; I got a little more creative with my next attack. I kid you not readers, as Venom was flying down river, I willed the light around him to solidify, and shape into a giant chimney. Before Venom could figure out what he was in, I slashed my spear down, like a hammer, and the chimney spit Venom out with a huge golden furnace blast. I followed Venom, who was on the verge of reaching the 5,000 feet in air, flew behind him, and created a Blazing Mega Sun Hammer, to knock him back within the battle field. I followed that up with another hit from a Blazing Sun Bat, sending him skimming across the water. Somehow, Venom managed to stop himself, in an at least 200 mph flight that wasn't his; ok, that was kinda scary. This time he didn't give me a chance to regain control. He created two swords, but instead of charging me like I thought he would, he took to the skies, roared really loud, and created an arsenal of hundreds of red sword constructs to hurl at me. It was like a scene from 300, weapons were raining for days! I could have willed the light around the weapons to solidify into shields or something, but there were hundreds of sword constructs raining down; even under the best of circumstances, that would be pretty hard to block. Instead, I created a Mega Sun Shield, 20 feet in width and height, pretty big I know, but like I said, it was raining weapons for days. The initial impact was a lot less that I expected, kinda like when you get tackled by someone who's not as strong as they look. My shield was definitely gonna hold, but I couldn't stay in defensive for long; Venom would eventually break it. I took a deep breath, focused on maintaining the shield, and with a huge leap, charged Venom as fast as I could.

Sometimes I know I say it too much, but you really gotta believe me when I say this was not as easy as it sounded. I soared upwards, my shield blocking all of Venom's attacks, which at first was kinda easy, like lifting 20 pounds with one arm, that was until Venom got creative. Suddenly, the red swords turned into red missiles raining from the sky. To make matters worse, Venom took a page from my book, and commanded his missiles to explode on contact. Forget trying to reach him, it was all I could do make sure my shield didn't break. Still, things got even worse. Missile constructs appeared around me in every direction, plus some buzz saws and swords for good measure. Venom crossed his swords over his chest like a pharaoh, and the constructs zeroed in on me. On a reflex, I deconstructed the shield and used the energy to create a barrier around myself, which was both smart and stupid at the same time. On one hand, the barrier was smaller than the shield, but retained the massive power used to make it. Even Venom's best attacks would have little effect on this thing. On the other hand, the barrage of weapons never stopped, I was pretty much trapped in this one spot, because like I said, this barrier would be hard to break; hard but not impossible. Venom's barrage went on for like five more seconds before I realized two things. A: I had an almost never ending supply of power that I could tap into to save my butt. B: I still had my spear out, and I was subconsciously feeding it energy. Seriously, the thing wasn't even visible under the golden bonfire, if I needed to break through Venom's body shield, this thing would DEFINITELY get the job done, all I had to do was get in striking distance. I thought about my barrier, how I made it out of recycled energy from another construct, if I could do that, then maybe I could do other things. I focused on giving the barrier more energy, feeding it, like it was a computer in need of a charge. If the barrier was getting brighter because if it, Venom couldn't tell, because he was too busy screaming curses on me and my bloodline. Finally, after I was pretty sure my barrier had enough power to blow through a skyscraper, unleashed most of the power on Venom in a focused, and powerful blast.

When I say that most of the power was used to blast at Venom, it was because some of it was kept to maintain my barrier. I was still under heavy fire by Venom's never ending construct barrage; if used up all of the power to blast him, i'd be skewered like a pig. Instead, I calculated the precise amount of energy it took to keep the barrier up, before I started feeding it more energy. Once I had built up enough energy to blast Venom out of the sky, I used most of that energy in my blast, while still maintaining the energy required to keep the barrier up. The blast was definitely powerful, but more important, it was fast. It ripped through Venom's constructs like they weren't even there, and he didn't have time to react, before getting hit by a golden Kamehameha (yes, I actually know what that is), and being shot higher into the sky like a ballistic missile. I quickly dashed after him, my blazing spear of death at the ready. Again, after being launched a considerable distance, Venom somehow managed to stop in midair; this time, he definitely saw me coming, and I may have been imagining it, but his face seemed to morph into an expression of fear. I was flying too fast for him to actually set up an effective counter attack, but he did his best. Once I was in slashing distance, he horizontally slashed at me from either side with his two swords that he somehow managed to hang on to. It was so easy to counter him, that i'd be insulted if it wasn't so funny. I willed two Sun Shields to form on either side of me, completely stonewalling Venom's blades. Before he could do anything else, I stabbed him in the chest with my spear and willed all of the energy in it to be unleashed in a super violent and destructive burst of golden flame, that I like to call Heaven's Wrath.

To say that this blast was powerful, would be the understatement of the century. Remember when I said that my fire powers had the potential to destroy entire cities? Well this blast, and i'm not even exaggerating, pretty much had the firepower to destroy NYC like it was a sand castle, heck, if the blast wasn't directed at the sky, it probably would have blown a trench of destruction through half of the Amazon and then some. The good news was that Venom's shield HAD to have been broken; seriously nothing could block an attack like that. The only problem was, and again i'm not even kidding, he was most likely on the verge of reaching the exosphere. Whether Venom could survive in the vacuum of space, I dunno. But if he did, he'd be back with his shield fully functional, and a very pissed off attitude towards me. I did the only thing I could do, and flew after him. I couldn't really see him anymore, but Heaven's Wrath had left and extremely bright vapor trail that I could see very clearly; I follow that, I find Venom. I flew as fast as I could, using every spare ounce of energy I had to get even faster, but even at my top speed, I was never gonna catch up to Venom. Still I tried, and tried, and tried, burning into my vast energy reserves to fly as fast as I could. Finally, after I was about to give up, I suddenly…..couldn't feel anything. It was like my body had just shut down; I was conscious and aware, but I couldn't feel my body or anything. When I opened my eyes, everything was just flashes of gold and light, moving so fast, it was like a kaleidoscope. I could tell I was moving really fast, but I didn't know how fast, or if there was anyway to actually know how fast; also, I didn't know how to stop. This wasn't good, at this rate i'd probably fly forever, or until I ran out of energy, or flew into space, whichever came first. I didn't want this, I wanted to catch up to Venom, and punch him back to earth; more than that, I wanted to stop.

Suddenly, as if my body heard me, I could feel my weight again, and everything wasn't a kaleidoscope of bright colors. Even better, I found myself face to face with Venom himself. Well, at first I didn't regard that as a good thing; in fact I may have screamed extremely loud. That was before I realized one key thing. Venom was frozen. Not actually frozen in ice, although we were really high up; in fact now that I think about it, I couldn't see the ground, and the sky was starting to look black, but that's beside the point. The point was that for some reason,Venom wasn't moving, he was pretty much frozen in mid scream. Immediately, I knew this wasn't just your average super speed perception thing. I had done something, either to Venom, or to myself, that made this happen. Upon thinking on this, I looked at my body, and nearly fainted on the sight. My body wasn't all there, it was like I was looking at a golden hologram it. Sure, I could feel my weight, but I could see right through my body, like it was made only of light. Then it hit me. Venom being frozen, my body being shiny and see through; I was as fast as light! After I got over that, I realized another thing; I was extremely powerful all of a sudden. Maybe it was the fact that I was still super hyped on adrenaline, but I felt super powerful. How powerful you may ask? I'll put it this way. In my current state, I could probably lift 300 tons, fly around the world 30 times in under a second, and blast a hole in the ocean floor a mile long, while I was still in orbit; and no i'm not exaggerating, I was so freaking ready right now! I floated over to Venom, who was still frozen in mid scream of pain. I could have done a number of things to him, each more fun to think about than the last, but for team reasons, I decided to keep it simple. I could still see the solar vapor trail, clearer than a beacon from God. In my mind, I imagined the vapor trail heating up, paving a way for Venom to crash in the most awful, most painful way possible, and finally taking out his shield (yes it was STILL WORKING). Next, I willed as much power to fit into my right fist as inhumanly possible, and let me tell you something, the power was half of that of an atomic bomb. I hit Venom with everything that I had, and raced after him. Again, the world switched from blue, to golden lights. I arrived just in time to see Venom crash into the river, which pretty much exploded like a overboiled pot. Everything in the water, including Jason, was washed ashore, and you better believe I laughed my solar butt off. That was until my past caught up with me.

It was as if my powers were shutting down. One second, I had enough energy to destroy half of Texas, now it was all I could do to stay afloat and conscious. My body shifted from pure light, back into my Sun Form, and even that was flickering on and off. This didn't make sense, I could sense that my energy reserves were so far from being depleted that it wasn't even a question of power, yet here I was feeling weaker than I had ever felt in my life. At least I had taken out Venom right? Nope! Out of the river, Venom slowly rose over the surface like a zombie. While I was definitely bugging out over the fact that he was still alive at this point, I was impressed with my handiwork. Venom's skin was halfway melted off, and his body shield was completely gone. The blonde guy had burns and bruises all over his body, and he looked like he was hit by a bus, then again, after feeling that blast, he probably wishes he was only hit by a bus. As his body regained his form, Venom summoned a battle axe, and charged me once more. He was sluggish, slow, and was basically limping, but he still had enough left in the tank to finish me. I barely had enough to stay awake. I thought I was finished, but before Venom could get within five feet of me, a bolt of lightning, thankfully that was blue, hit him in the chest,and sent him soaring backwards. A second later, Jason landed on the side of the river, his sword ready, and a thunderbolt in his other hand. I thought he was gonna charge Venom head on, then again, I had only just noticed the absence of the monster army. But before he could, the sound of a huge sonic boom, followed by Grant mentally screaming "_GUYS I'M COMIN' IN HOT, TEE HIM UP!"_ exploded in our heads. I couldn't exactly do that, but thankfully, Jason could. A bolt of lightning erupted under Venom's feet, sending him soaring into the sky. Half a second later, I felt Jason's arms wrap around me, and carry me to shore; where I collapsed, completely exhausted.

(Grant's Perspective)

Ok, two things guys. A: Yes I know I was a little late in my arrival, but bear with me, I can explain. B: No I didn't run away from the battle, and because this is the last part of the chapter, I can piece everything together. From start to finish, the plan was about a decisive blow that would take Venom down. Thunder-Man and I had figured out that Venom was vulnerable to fire, and getting hit really, really hard in the face. The team was pinned down by tar monster's who were basically made of the same substance as Venom's skin, but we couldn't focus all of our combined efforts on them, or we'd never finish Venom off. So, Thunder-Man and I came up with a plan to divide and conquer. Basically, Sunbird would make two Blazing Sun Blades, as she calls them, and Jason would use his speed to fend off the monsters. Sunbird, who just so happened to have golden fire powers, would be in charge of holding off Venom for a few minutes. My job was to fly off into the distance for about 50 miles or so, and gather a ridiculous amount of speed. Next, I was supposed to fly back as fast as I could, and punch Venom dead in the face; the boom from the punch would be enough to make him shed his skin, and allow me to take the stone from the guy inside of , the plan was only supposed to take about three minutes. Due to some…..unforeseen circumstances, it took ten. Let me explain what happened.

As soon as Sunbird blew the majority of the monsters away with an explosive wave, I took to the air, and turned on the jets, flying as fast as I could upriver. It didn't take me long to break the sound barrier, maybe like five seconds or so. But that wasn't enough, I needed to be faster than Venom could see me coming, and because it was obvious that he could see and react on my level, this wasn't fast enough. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, giving it 110%, and getting faster by the second. Below me, the continent of South America rushed by in a blur of green trees, and bluish brown rivers. Let me tell you something, nothing in this world compares to the feeling of flying. It's like you're unrestricted from everything. As long as you have the skill and the endurance for it, you can fly anywhere in the world, no planes, no money, just you and the open air. The feeling of the wind rushing against my face at like 1000 mph was indescribable. The very knowledge that things like gravity, physics, and normal limits mean nothing to me, was simply mind blowing. Who cares if I might never play football again, I dare Peyton Manning to fly faster than sound. Suddenly, my body felt strange. It was like the joy and excitement had somehow electrified every nerve in my body, and believe me I know the feeling. My speed tripled in half a second, and I sped off into the distance like a missile. At first it was scary. I was going faster than I thought was even possible for me, even while flying. After 10 seconds, it felt amazing, I was flying faster than I ever thought possible, I was freaking unstoppable! After another 5 seconds, it felt scary again, I was going faster than I ever thought possible, even while flying, but there was just one little problem; I didn't know how to stop.

It was like I was shot out of a cannon; the momentum was unbelievably awesome, but I had no control over it. I was going so fast, that I couldn't even see most of what I was flying over; everything was just a blur of green and blue. I flew out of control for like 20 seconds, desperately trying to stop, but not knowing how to. When I had flew so far, to where I was starting to see more blue on the horizon than anything, I made one last ditch attempt for a stop. I put everything I had in my brain, and focused it on a point of focus where I would stop without warning. You see my power of flight isn't about me propelling myself off of the ground, or mentally willing myself to levitate, no it's about gravity. Let me explain, because I know I made it sound simple when I was fighting Colossus. You see, I figured it out really quickly while I was jumping on my trampoline after practice. I was deep in thought about how I did what I did on the field. While doing so, I imagined what it would be like to not be affected by gravity. On the next jump, I didn't come down, and believe me nothing will bring you closer to $#!++! % your pants. The point I am trying to make here, is that my flight power is based of me willing myself to not be affected by gravity, while in the air I can twist turn, speed up, and roll at will, but if I want to land, all I have to do is will myself to be affected by gravity again. What I was about to do was similar to that. Instead of gravity bringing me down to the ground like a meteor, I wanted it to function like an airbag, stopping me in my tracks, but leaving me in the air. I focused on a distance that would take me 10 seconds to reach, I didn't really know where that would even be, but I thought as hard as I could on that, and counted down. 5,4,3,2,1. Suddenly my body stopped, as if it was being held in place by a giant hand. I must have been going super duper mega fast, because when I stopped, a huge sonic boom, way bigger than the one that breaks the sound barrier, echoed through the air, people in Cuba probably could have heard it. I felt strange, like my body had broken apart while flying, and was in the process of recovering. The sensation lasted for a few seconds, but quickly subsided. I didn't know how, but I could tell that i'd be able to fly at that speed again; this time without losing control. I quickly surveyed my surroundings, and nearly lost the bottom half of my jaw. Out in front of me was nothing but endless sea, no land whatsoever, just water, water, and even more water. I quickly turned behind me, and thankfully saw South America not to far away, all I had to do was fly at 5x the speed of sound, and clock Venom in his head; no biggie right? I turned around, got into my game zone, and prepared to take off. Before I could get out of the starting blocks, something big, heavy, and fast, tackled me from behind, and flew me into the ocean.

The good news was that even without my powers, I could hold my breath for like 2 minutes. With them, my lungs were able to hold twice the capacity of air, so with a proper deep breath, I would be able to last a full 30 minutes underwater. That was if I had time to take a breath; since I didn't, i'd be lucky to last five minutes. I struggled and fought against whatever it was that had me, but it clearly had enough strength to keep me down. It started to claw and bite at me with it's teeth and fangs, so it clearly was not human, but it also had arms and legs, so it wasn't entirely a beast. Either way, the thing was trying to drown me, and I was having none of it. When the thing bit at me again, I quickly reached and grabbed it's head, locking it tight over my shoulder. I took off like rocket, and in no time, we were above the water and back into the air. I quickly flipped, and donkey kicked the thing off of me, sending it soaring upwards. Once I was able to catch my bearings, I managed to get a look at the beast, and yes it was a beast. It was 8 feet tall, with strong muscular legs, ripped muscles, and pecs that looked strong enough to block bullets. It has red scaly skin, and a long tail to match. It's head was that of a dragon, with cat-like eyes, two golden horns coming out of it's head, not to mention it's golden talons on it's hands and feet. At first I couldn't believe it, but after I had closed my eyes and blinked a good few times, I finally came to terms with the fact that I was staring at a human-like red dragon, that had just tried to drown/eat me. It was bad enough that I had to deal with Venom and his never ending legion of war crazed tar monsters, now I had to deal with this joker? Being a hero can really bite sometimes. Where this thing came from, I didn't know. Why it was trying to kill me? Maybe it was hungry. All I knew was that Thunder-Man and Sunbird were busting their asses to stall for time, so that I could take Venom out. In other words, I didn't have time for this. Bummer for me, the dragon man did. He didn't roar or shout, like Venom did, he just raised his claws, and charged me so fast, I almost didn't see him.

The dragon man tackled me hard in the gut, but I managed to get used to the momentum, knee him in the chest, and throw him off of me. I didn't give him any room for rest. I flew after him, and punched him as hard as I could in the face and gut as often as I could, once I caught up. I thought that it was just dumb luck, but apparently, this thing could go toe-to-toe with me. After punching him with the force of a truck for the tenth time, he blocked a left hook aimed for his face, and started to put the hurt on me. First, he hit me like 100 times in the face and chest at speeds so fast, even I couldn't keep up. Even with my armor, plus my nearly indestructible body, this thing could really punch, I was gonna feel this in the morning. Next, dragon man uppercutted me, and while I was stunned, tackled me again with the force of a missile. Instead of just blunt impact, dragon man started to punch me in the gut, which was so fast that, it I imagine this is what a jackhammer would feel on your normal people chests. Still, dragon man didn't stop, he caught me by the neck and squeezed hard. I imagine he was trying to cut into my skin, but that wouldn't be happening anytime soon. Realizing that, he uppercutted me again, and launched me high into the air; before I had a chance to recover, I felt the heel of his foot against my forehead, sending me plummeting towards the water again. It was at that moment that I realized how much I underestimated the beast. First, was when I underestimated his strength; I couldn't afford to make that mistake with anyone else. Second, was when I underestimated his intelligence. I knew a little bit about personal combat, and I know that a heel to the head, at the right angle, can really mess you up. In other words, that thing knew how to fight, how to kill. More so, he was trained by someone, the way a soldier is trained for battle; I knew if I survived this fight, I'd meet the head soon enough.

I managed to recover right before I hit the water, but by then the dragon man had already caught up to me. He tried punching me again, but I was ready this time, and blocked every last one of his super speed strikes. I managed to catch him by the wrists, and force his arms apart, but he had something special for me. Yeah, you probably guessed it. Dragon Man opened his mouth, and bathed me in a stream of white hot flames. I was surprised by two things. A: THIS $#!+ HURT! The flames had to be like 2,000 degrees; I felt like I was being roasted for a barbecue. B: The flames didn't kill me. Sure they burned like hell, but I didn't melt or anything like that, which still wasn't a great alternative, considering I was in more pain than I had ever experienced in my life. Dragon Man held on to me, and didn't let me go, determined to roast me alive. Yes, I was screaming like crazy, but I still was able to somewhat focus. I remembered how fire couldn't burn underwater, usually, and used that to my advantage. I managed to knee Dragon Man in the gut again, which caused his flames to redirect from my face. While he was stunned, I forced him underwater, and using my flight, spun around like a torpedo; that would take the gas out of his flames. Next, I punched him as hard as I could under the chin with the mother of all uppercuts; seriously people, I probably sent waves back to the shore of the Amazon. I followed him up, and punched him with a gorilla pound, sending him soaring forwards. Finally, I flew ahead of him, kicked him higher into the air, and while he was still on the way up, I flew ahead of him, and summoned my axe. When he caught up, I sliced him in half. There wasn't as much gore as I expected, just a lot of orange blood that splattered everywhere. Besides, as he fell, dragon man melted into ash, that was scattered to the wind. I didn't feel sorry for it, and I didn't have time to anyway, because out of nowhere, a huge red portal sprung up, and three huge medieval-like, big, bulky, on all fours, red dragons, flew out of it and roared so loud, it would be impossible for the whole continent to not hear it. The dragons were way above me, but they turned their heads toward me and snarled. Either they were really hungry, or they could smell the blood of the dragon man I had just killed; either way, they flew at me with aims to either cook, eat, or cook and eat me.

This time, I was having none of it. Those dragons were fast, but I was way faster, and smaller; plus I had an indestructible axe. The dragons circled overhead for a few more seconds, before charging me from all sides. I took aim at the dragon who was coming down on my right side, and counter charged. I tapped into Blitz while I charged the dragon, so he was an easy target. I quickly soared to his neck, willed my axe to extend into spear mode, and swung with all I had. The cut wasn't clean or pretty but it did the job. Most of the dragon's head was hanging on by a small thread of sinew, so it was definitely dead. I threw my spear at one of the other dragons, who looked like he was on the verge of actually facing me, and the axe sliced right through his neck, and returned back to my hand. The last dragon was just a formality at this point. I flew onto his back, sliced off his wings, and brought my spear down on his head, slicing his dragon brain in half.

After that…let's call it a 'workout', I set my sights back on the Amazon, where I was needed, but it would be a while before I would be able to return to help my friends. I suddenly heard some type of war horn sound, and from about a few thousand feet above me, a giant red portal, big enough to swallow a football stadium, popped up. Out of it, an army of Dragon Men, about 1,000 in total flew out. They were armed with black swords, axes, shields, even armor. They were flanked by 20 medieval dragons, like the three ones I had just killed, who were also dressed in black armor. They were coming at me pretty fast, so I tried to shift into Blitz before I realized I couldn't. For some reason, I had never shifted out of it, I was still moving at super speed, but the dragon army was just that fast; I hefted my axe and counter charged the army, refusing to let them pin me into a corner.

For the 60 seconds in real time that I actually lasted, I did pretty ok. The Dragon Army flew at me from every direction possible, cutting off any chance I had at maneuvering around them, so I had to improvise. I threw my axe as hard as I could, and let it go on a killing spree. I had to remember to thank Mrs. Kennedy for the remote control function on my axe, it was a real game changer. Every half second, twenty dragons were cut clean through in every direction. It wasn't a perfect strategy, in fact after a while I had to call my axe back, due to the oncoming rush, but I managed to take out a good 200 or so Dragon Men, so I didn't complain. I managed to escape the onrush of Dragon Men, long enough for me to change my axe into spear mode. I rushed back into the fray, swinging wildly, and took out another 50 Dragon Men in the process. Even though these dudes were fast, I was slightly faster, plus, given the fact that I was going at the speed between Blitz, and Blitz Extreme, I could hold my own pretty well. I flew back and forth killing as many Dragon Men as I could with each swing. Their armor was kinda strong, in fact if it wasn't me swinging the axe, they might have been ok, but it was me, and I was crazy strong. As far as strategy goes the only thing I could think of was, kill, kill, kill. As long as I kept up this pace, and avoided those suspicious black weapons, that looked nothing like obsidian, i'd be ok. That was until the huge warship flew out of the red portal.

The warship was made completely out of that black metal that the Dragon Army was equipped with. It was the length of two football fields, armed to the teeth with missile blasters, weird looking things that were probably laser cannons, and had weird looking fighter jets on it. If the boss of this operation was anywhere, he would be in there. Anyway, I was still hacking down Dragon Men, with relative ease. If that ship was gonna be a problem, i'd deal with it after I got done with this. Unfortunately for me, the ship had other ideas. A red hieroglyph like thing, as big as a billboard in the shape of a dragon head, blazed in the air a few feet from the ship. Now I wasn't a pro at this whole arcane thing, but i'm pretty sure that was some high level magical wiz biz going on up there, which did not spell good news for me. The image burned in the air for a few seconds, or should I say nanosecs, and then combusted into like a thousand little red arrow-like beams. Each of the beams hit all of the remaining members of the Dragon Army, and boy did it help them. All of a sudden, they glowed with a powerful red aura; you'd think they were connected to the stone of Ares. But the worse thing? They were SO much faster. Seriously, I went from being in a comfortable stride, to being up to my neck in monsters. So much for a comfortable pace, now i'd be flying for my life.

To be fair, I lasted a lot longer than I thought I would. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, to keep up with the Dragon Army, and went to work. I knew I couldn't stop to fight, i'd be dead if I did, but that didn't mean i'd have to be all evasion. I broke away from the onslaught, and kept flying, always focused on staying ahead. To help keep them off of me, I kept throwing my axe backwards, and while still flying, moved my hand wildly in every direction. I didn't know if that would work, because I assumed i'd have to maintain constant eye contact with the axe to control it's flight pattern; luckily, it wasn't so, and my ears were filled with the dragon-like screeches of my fallen enemies. I did this for a while, occasionally having to hack down rouge Dragon Men that managed to catch up to me. Still, I was getting tired, Blitz Extreme was difficult to maintain, and these Dragon Men were not making it easier for me. I managed to throw my axe back a few more times, taking out about 50 or so with each volley, before I couldn't maintain my speed anymore, and my past caught up with me. First, the Dragon Man started blasting fireballs at me. I managed to avoid most of them, but you have to realize, when you're being shot at from all angles by 500+ pissed of Dragon Men hybrids, you'll get a fireball or two to the face. During the small second that I was stunned, the Dragon Army basically dogpiled me with fire. Seriously, they all managed to get in a perfect sphere-like formation around me, and simultaneously let it go, fire style. To say that the pain was excruciating, would be the biggest understatement in the universe. So much fire was being rained down on me from every direction, I couldn't see anything but orange, I couldn't feel anything but the burning streams of flame, and above all, I couldn't do anything but scream. The heat was unbearable, it had to be like 10 volcanoes, filled with magma,being poured all over my body; I imagine this is what Hell would feel like; talk about an epiphany moment. I wanted to escape, I wanted the pain to stop, hell I would have taken death over this, too bad my body had other ideas. Seriously, even I was surprised at how my body wasn't being consumed by the flames, I mean, invulnerability had to have some limits right? Anyway, after like 20 seconds of being roasted alive, I felt extremely sharp pains in my arms and legs, like someone shot spears through them. I felt the metal that had just pierced me, extend into long lengthy metal bonds. that had to have been chains. The chains pulled my arms and legs apart until I was in an aerial spread eagle position, and then the pulling stopped. The Dragon Army suddenly stopped attacking me, although there faces said otherwise. They were still snarling, biting, swiping, and snorting fire at me, but still they didn't lay another claw on me, even though they looked like they really wanted to. I didn't know what they were gonna do to me, but for now I decided to play along. These chains may have been enough to hurt me, but I could feel how breakable they were. Also, the chains were attached to four dragons, the medieval kind, that were flying in various directions. They looked heavy, but I could move them like they were pillows; for now, I was simply catching my breath.

Suddenly, a red beam of light shot out of the dragon warship, and stopped a few feet in front of me. The light blazed like a red fire, and then flashed bright. After the flash dissipated, my eyes were faced with the horror of a scaly, black-haired, extremely beautiful woman. Seriously, it was a hot chick! She was Asian looking, with tan skin, and red cat like eyes. She was wearing some type of battle armor that was only covering her boobs and upper rib sections. Her torso was completely exposed, but I doubt that mattered anyway. Like I said, her body was scaly, like a lizard's. It probably wouldn't have been enough to keep my axe out of her guts, but I bet her skin was hard enough to endure shotgun blasts. By the way, I forgot to mention that she had huge red dragon wings protruding from her back, that just happened to be on fire. She wore red and gold arm shields with matching boots. She wore some type of long and loose red skirt, with Chinese dragons designs on it, and yes she was wearing underwear underneath. She was also ready for a fight. Two katanas were strapped to her back, she had two knives strapped to each of her arms, and her fingernails were black talons, like the material her weapons were made of. I wasn't particularly scared of this woman, but I was definitely interested. Obviously, she captured me for a reason, all I had to do was sit tight, and wait for her to explain. If worse came to worse, I could bust out, summon my axe again, and raise lots of hell.

The woman floated towards me, and cupped my chin in her hands. Her talons felt prickly, and I must have flinched, because she suddenly smirked, and slowly raked them down the side of my face. Just like I thought, the metal was sharp enough to cut me, and I felt blood drip down my face; this seemed to turn on.

"I like the way you bleed, little boy," she said in a deep reptilian female like voice.

"Thanks," I said, trying not to shudder at her unnatural voice. "I like to bleed good for the ladies, especially pretty ones like you."

"Ugh," she said. "Do not waste your time, I am not interested in mating with you."

"Your loss sweet cheeks."

She glared at me, her eyes glowing ever so slightly.

"You are human," she said. "And yet, more, explain yourself immediately, or I will tear your heart out."

I had no desire to get my heart torn out, so I quickly told her my hero name, that I was a mutant, and apologized for killing a lot of her Dragon Men, on the off chance that this was a misunderstanding.

"By the way," I added. "I didn't catch your name."

"You will address me as the Dragon Empress," she said with a slight growl. "And do not fret over the creatures, they are insignificant."

"How can you say that?" I asked her. "Aren't they your soldiers, don't you care about them?"

"They are not really alive, little mutant, their lives are worth less than dirt."

"What do you mean, they are not really alive?"

She turned her back to me and floated a few feet away.

"Stalling?" she asked me. "Very smart, but ineffective, you will not live to see another day, little, mutant, you can not be allowed to interfere in my conquest."

"I don't care about your stupid conquest!" I snapped at her. "I'm trying to help my friends beat this alien monster, who has the power of a war god."

"Oh yes." she mused. "My ship did pick up massive power levels in the direction that you traveled from. Just for your information, that girl who wields the power of the sun, will fall very soon, even with her guardian lightning bolt."

My insides froze, and I hoped that I wasn't letting it show. Sunbird and Thunder-Man were getting worn down, and here I was playing bondage with a dragon lady dominatrix. I had to bust out of here fast, but now wasn't the right time, I needed to know more about this woman, she was too dangerous to be left alone.

"Now regarding your previous question?" she continued. "These creatures are merely experiments made of dragon, demon, and human DNA. My father Surtur has rewarded me handsomely for supplying him with a never ending army of minions, who have no will of their own, and no desire; other than death and destruction."

"If that's true," I responded. "Then what's to stop your boys from tearing each other to bits?"

She pointed to a golden necklace with a red ruby on it. It didn't look like anything special, but her expression of dominance and superiority said otherwise.

"They have no will, no intelligence, no individuality." she said. "But like bees, they belong to a hive, and I am their queen."

"Thought you were their empress," I said.

"SAME THING!" she snapped at me, her body briefly igniting in flames. "This pendant controls all of their brain wave activity, as long as I have it, the only people they will destroy, are the ones I command them to."

"Good to know," I responded. "I'll put that info to good use when I take you down."

"Says the boy freak wrapped in chains," she said. "Do not make false statements of bravado, youngling, it will only make your death that much more painful."

"Yeah, yeah," I said while preparing myself. I had figured out how to beat her, or at least buy me enough time to take her on directly, but that warship armed with weapons still bothered me; I needed to know one more thing before busting out.

"You said something about conquest," I said. "What exactly are you conquering?"

She smiled really wide, revealing a set of nasty sharp dragon fangs to go with her dragon themed appearance.

"Why, your entire planet dear little one!"

I resisted the urge to laugh. Sure she seemed like a featherweight, but she was definitely vindictive. If she said she was gonna conquer the world, I had to take that seriously.

"And just how are you gonna do that, little miss Dragon Empress?" I asked her. "No offense but, your army is kinda lacking in the whole numbers thing, plus that ship of yours doesn't seem to have enough firepower to take over an entire planet on it's own."

"Humans," she said with a disgusted tone. "So quick to judge solely on appearance; my vessel is armed with massive amounts of weaponry, but that is only for occasional massacres, just for the Hel of it. The true prize is the missile silo in the weapons vault. There are only six of them, each for every land mass, except for the cold ones. Each missile has enough explosive energy to decimate expanses of land as big as the kingdom known as Texas, but that is only the beginning. After the initial impact, that will be sure to cripple the morale of the inhabitants, the residual energy of the explosions will open Texas sized portals to my home realm of Muspelheim, where millions of my father's servants will heed the call, and flood into your world. We will kill every last man, woman, and child. The water will become fire and blood, all life will burn in fire and brimstone; the glory of my father will rain down on this pathetic Midgard, and I will usher in the first great conquest of Muspelheim. GLORY TO SURTUR!"

I made my move. No offense to her, but she talks way too much for my liking. I went into Blitz Extreme, gripped the chains near my hands, and pulled on them with all I had. Next, I summoned my axe, and quickly slashed off the chains on my arms and legs. I didn't bother to remove the points out of my arms and legs; it would take too much time, and I probably would bleed a lot more with them out. The spell to make the Dragon Men faster, had either worn off, or Dragon Empress wasn't focusing on maintaining it, because they barely moved while I escaped. I threw my axe towards the upper right medieval dragon as hard as I could; the blade went clean through his neck. While his head was falling in slow motion, I motioned my hand in a circle and the axe followed, decapitating the remaining three medieval dragons. Finally, I turned my attention to the queen bee, herself. She said that the necklace was the one giving her control over the dragon army, so that became my focus. Again, I probably should have done it on the first try, and this was the last time I would show sportsmanship to my enemies, but instead of going for a killer blow across her neck, I reached out with my free hand, to take the necklace from her. She was way faster than I anticipated, because even in Blitz Extreme, she reached for one of her katanas, and nearly took my left hand off. I managed to move it out of the way, thank God, but that was the least of my worries. For starters, it was pretty clear that her sword, as well as all of the weapons in the Dragon Army arsenal, was made of whatever metal was able to pierce me, so my invulnerability factor was useless. Second, she actually knew how to use that sword with precision, skill, and discipline. I was pretty much 75% power swings, 25% basic moves Nightcrawler managed to teach me; in other words, there was a very, very, very, good chance I was gonna get skewered.

I made myself a promise that if I lived to make it back to the Helicarrier, that I would learn how to use weapons like someone who wanted to survive a fight. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't any good either. Dragon Empress hacked, stabbed, and assaulted me with so many aerial sword maneuvers, that I would have been a piece of sushi on a silver platter, if I didn't have any basic skill. Lucky for me, I managed to keep up with her, just enough, so that I could block, and dodge most of her strikes, and stay alive. Even so, I got scraped a few good times. She was always on the offensive, pushing forward, while I was flying backwards; desperately blocking and dodging. She struck at me multiple times with well precisioned slashes, before managing to get a decent stab near my face. She didn't get the kill, but she did leave a big gash on my right cheek that stung real bad. I managed to ignore the pain, and keep moving, looking for any kind of opening that could help me push her back, and more importantly, get that necklace off of her. She kept the pressure on me with that sword of hers, and over the 3 seconds in real time that we crossed blades, she managed to cut me across the chest, legs, and the other side of my face. Luckily, the armor held up just enough that the blows didn't reach my fleshy areas. After those three seconds were up, Dragon Empress decided that she was fed up with me, and made a move to finish the fight. She kept the pressure on, making sure to keep her face close to me, and when I managed to lock her blade in my axe, and wrench it from her hands, she opened her mouth, and blasted me with a wave of fire.

My first thought was, OH F*(&amp;!^% $#!+, NOT AGAIN! But that was before I realized something important; it didn't hurt. Seriously, the fire was definitely hot enough to melt right through steel, and I had taken a volcano sized fire bath from those dragons, but for some odd reason, her flames didn't hurt, they barely felt like the heat in an average room. Still, this was the perfect opportunity for a surprise attack, while she expected me to be cringing and crying out, I charged her as fast as I could, and slashed my axe across her neck, or at least I would have, if she didn't move. The slash didn't decapitate her, but it barely managed to swipe her necklace with one of the points. To be honest, she couldn't have gotten this lucky in her life again, because if my axe had gotten any closer to her neck, it would have cut a line clean through the front of her neck, and she'd have bleed out. As such, the axe cut the necklace in half, which abruptly exploded with the force of a firecracker. After that, all hell broke loose.

We were both so shocked at what just happened, that we slowed down enough to witness the descent into madness. The Dragon Army blinked their eyes, roared a lot, and shook their heads, like they were coming out of a trance, which they pretty much were. They looked at each other, like they were foreign, dangerous animals to each other, and before Dragon Empress could do anything, they turned on each other in a huge and bloody battle. Under most circumstances I could appreciate a good monster fight, now was no exception. The Dragon Men abandoned their weapons and started to rip each other to shreds with their claws and teeth. The sounds of roars, and blasts of fire were extremely loud, but I could her enough to know that Dragon Empress was shrieking and cussing, like a spoiled princess who didn't get the pony she wanted for her birthday. She turned on me, grabbed her other katana and charged at me; this time I was having none of it. I had pretty much figured out her strategy which was multiple strikes, and aerial maneuvers, followed by quick stabs, and pressurized attacks. This time, I decided to change it up a bit. I blocked all of her horizontal strikes with my axe, which by the way, I could move through the air just as easily as I could a knife, and when she tried for a stab, I sidestepped, or side flew, and brought my axe down on her arm, severing it completely. She screeched, and quickly backed up, creating a fire barrier around herself, as I relentlessly pounded away at it with my axe. After hitting it like ten times, the barrier exploded in my face, and sent me tumbling backwards. When the dust settled, Dragon Empress was floating in the air, her severed arm completely regrown. She pulled out two of her knives, did some sort of Indian-like battle cry, and charged me again.

To say that the fight was chaos, would not do it justice. Dragon Empress slashed and stabbed at me with her black knives, and after a few slashes across the chest, plus a knife lodged into my right shoulder, I pretty much got the hint that swinging an axe was useless. I ditched it and decided to fight unarmed. I know that seems stupid, but i've had an unfortunate amount of experience with girls assaulting me with weapons. Dragon Empress slashed at me from either side with her daggers, but I backed up enough so that the blades missed me. When she tried to stab at me on the go around, I rushed in, grabbed her wrists and twisted them, forcing her to let go of the knives. I realized that her main asset was not strength, she was definitely strong enough to lift cars and trucks, but compared to me, it was like grappling with a sixth grader. I quickly kneed her in the gut, uppercutted her with a powerful right punch, but before I could finish her off, I got blindsided by a Dragon Man. Yeah, I forgot to mention, the whole chaos thing? That was from the Dragon Army mayhem I had caused. While me and Dragon Empress were fighting, an entire battle was raging around us. The roars and screeches were deafening, and inferno blazed around the air so much, that if it wasn't for my newfound immunity, i'd never be able to focus on the fight. Anyway, it was basically a free for all, me and Dragon Empress were definitely fighting each other, but occasionally a stray Dragon Man would attack us individually, and we'd have to dispose of them, before resuming our fight. Regarding the one that had just tackled me, I simply torpedo spun until he let go, did a midair somersault to regain my bearings, and summoned my axe to slice him in half, before charging Dragon Empress again.

This time, something was different. She was glowing with that same red energy that the Dragon Army used to have, when she hit them with that spell. I didn't take any chances, and decided to ditch my axe again, and fight hand-to-hand; that always seemed to work best with me. We collided for a few nanosecs, and started to beat the living crap out of each other. The spell she had used on herself had definitely made her strong and fast enough to deal with me, but I was no pushover either. I punched at her multiple times in the face and gut, some of them made impact, but she was super fast, and had some crazy fighting skills; she gave me what for to. Most of the problem stemmed from the fact that she had claws made of that black metal. She usually punched and kicked at me, most of which didn't make impact, put when she used her claws, them shredded through my outer armor, and made some really deep scratches on my face. After that, I pretty much decided to hell with gentleness, and yes, I was holding back on her account. I tapped into Blitz Extreme and went ham on her for only God knows how long, or short; time at supersonic speeds is confusing to say the least. Anyway, I beat her down with the fury of an entire football team, and then decelerated out of Blitz Extreme to give her one more mega punch to the face. She was supposed to fall to the ocean, but she had way more endurance than I gave her credit for. She did get launched back a good several yards, but she managed to catch herself, and stop in midair. Before we could get around to charging each other again, the Dragon Men decided to break up our little fight fest. Hundreds of em' just up and decided to attack us, and I had to bust out my axe for some heavy duty slaughtering. It took about 3 whole seconds, but with the combined efforts of Dragon Empress and myself (no we were not working together, we were both killing our own enemies), we managed to slash, hack, and decimate the entire Dragon Army; not a single one was left alive. I heard Dragon Empress roar like a lion, as she turned on me.

"YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON BOY?!" she bellowed at me. "MY WEAPONS WILL STILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOUR WORLD, AND USHER IN A NEW AGE FOR MUSPELHEIM, AS FOR YOU, YOU SHALL BURN IN HELLFIRE!"

Before I could say something cool and witty like, "no thanks", a sphere of fire, orbited by weird looking symbols materialized around me. I tried to pound my way out of it, but I couldn't make a single dent. Suddenly, I felt a lot of pressure on every side of my body, and when I say a lot of pressure, I mean I felt like a giant hand that weighed a million pounds was trying to crush me into a ball. The weight wasn't unbearable, but it was definitely difficult to withstand, I could barely move a muscle, much less escape the barrier; then came the fire. I wasn't worried when she said "burn in hellfire," but I really should have. Fire blazed inside of the barrier, filling every space with violent inferno. I only wish it were regular fire; that would have been less painful. As it was, Hellfire was just awful to say the least. The fire was so hot, probably hotter than the sun, my body was not accustomed to handle that kind of heat. Worse than that, the fire was doing more than just damage to my body, I felt the fire burn within me, as in it felt like something inside me, something so unbelievably precious, was burning along with my body. I was definitely screaming but I couldn't hear myself. I was praying for the pain to end, but knowing that it wouldn't, knowing that I wouldn't be able to die, and that as long as the flame persisted, all I would know was unimaginable pain. How did I know that, Dragon Empress told me. She was whispering in my head, telling me secrets about hellfire and how nothing in the universe could stack up to the pain. She said that she wanted me to suffer forever, that she would like to enjoy my screams forever, but that she had no time for it, and that it was time for me to die. I was in so much pain, I nearly told her thanks, but before I could, the million pound weight, and the hellfire exploded in my face.

It hurt, or at least i'm pretty sure it was supposed to. Basically, the spell, and yes this was magic, imploded on itself in a massive explosion, that was powerful enough to destroy 10 city blocks. Even with my invulnerability, an explosion like that should have knocked my lights out, but, something weird happened. The explosion detonated around me, and I felt the force of the explosion, but when I looked at myself, I was all there, no missing limbs or anything. Remnants of the spell flickered around me in flashes of red lightning. It was as if the spell just wasn't compatible with me, like I was somehow unfit for it to destroy. Dragon Empress' face was simply priceless, a mix of total exhaustion, and sheer disbelief that I could survive such an attack. Sure glad I didn't tell her about my magical immunity.

"My turn," I simply said, as I charged her for the last time.

She had nothing left in the tank, which made it easier for me to punch her five times in the face, uppercut her into the air, and upon catching up with her, summon my axe, and slice her wings off. Then I hammer punched her with as much force as I could muster, and sent her soaring into the ocean with a very satisfying BOOM, SPLASH! I didn't have time to enjoy my victory, she said that the missiles would launch regardless of anything else, I flew towards her ship, desperate to stop the attack. Lucky for me, the ship didn't have a force field or anything; guess she didn't expect any visitors. The ship had six individual rocket launchers each armed with a missile ready to go, on the deck of the ship. I could have destroyed the launchers with my axe, but I couldn't take the chance of so many missiles being detonated at once, and so close to a populated area. Instead, I raced to a door at the back of the deck, and ran around the inside of the ship as fast as I could, looking for a way to destroy the whole thing. I raced up and down every corridor, in every room, and after a few seconds I got lucky. I found a place that looked like a futuristic engine room, rows and rows of computer like devices, that were blinking a bunch of signals that I didn't understand, were stacked against each other. In the center of the room, was the engine, or at least I assume it was. It looked like one of Sunbird's mini suns, but with a lot more swirling fire, that was packed into a glass container. The container was attached to four really thick black tubes that were snaking their way through the ship's walls and structure. This was obviously the power source for the whole ship, and these tubes were transferring the volatile energy throughout it. I immediately got a suicidal idea. I summoned my axe, and very carefully, made a small cut into one of the tubes. Good thing I did it in Blitz, because the flames spewed out of the the cut, like water out of a fire hose. No time to think anymore, the ship was going down, and if I was gonna go down with it, then i'd at least make sure all of the potential civilians that could get caught in the blast were safe.

I went into Blitz Extreme, and went smashing away. First I cut completely through all of the other tubes, and for good measure, threw my axe straight through the glass container. The explosion was pretty sick, or at least in super slow mo it was. Fire was slowly blazing outwards, on it's way to consume everything in it's path. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been a big deal, but then again what counts as normal anymore for me? The explosion would be enough to destroy the ship, and if it wasn't for those Texas busting missiles, there would be nothing to worry about; hell, i'd probably be able to take the hit with no problem. But this wasn't the case, if I didn't get this ship higher into the air, it would definitely destroy most of South America, including Thunder-Man and Sunbird.

While still in Blitz Extreme, I flew outside of the ship, and under the hull. I read online that an average battleship weighs about 47,000 tons. I had been on a battleship when I went on vacation with my family a few years back. I could tell you from personal experience, that this ship was at least twice the size of an average battleship; this meant that on my own, I had to push a 94,000 ton continent sized bomb into earth's upper atmosphere in about 3 seconds real time. Man I really should have thought this one through. I pushed up against the ship with all of the strength I had. At first, it was useless, I was strong, but 94,000 tons was too much, even for me. After a few more nanosecs, I managed to push the ship up, maybe half of a foot, at this rate i'd never make it. Still, I pushed against the ship with all I had. I remembered my coach telling me, before he came out as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that most of lifting came from the legs, and lower body strength, not upper body; I decided to see if I could translate that into midair flight terms. I curled my legs up, like I was doing crunches, focused on flying as fast as possible into the air, and let it rip. I was doing a lot better on the second go around, the speed of my flight was doing most of the work, but I was definitely making progress. I didn't focus on anything other than going up, nothing else mattered. I willed myself to fly faster, and faster, knowing that I had to at least get 200,000 feet into the air before I could make a last ditch effort to escape. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until I felt it again. That super mega, near uncontrollable burst of speed, that got me to where I was in the first place; I was suddenly making more progress than I thought would be possible. This progress didn't come without a cost though. My lower body was producing so much momentum, that my focus had to be shifted to maintaining the weight with my upper body strength; again, this ship weighed 94,000 pounds. I closed my eyes and focused on keeping it together. My arms were screaming in agony, they felt like they were gonna implode on themselves, but I kept going, ignoring the pain. How long did I fly? In regular time, about 1.3 seconds, but at super speed that may as well have been a whole minute. After that, I started to feel the heat on my back, the fire starting to engulf me in the inferno. I risked opening my eyes and looked around. I could still see the ground, and if I looked to either side of me, I could see the edge of California in the distance; In other words, I was getting dangerously close to being in orbit, oh, and I couldn't breathe. I decided that this was far, enough and that it was best to abandon ship.

This time, I had more control over my flight. I couldn't just stop my momentum, or i'd be overtaken by the flames. Instead, I let go of the weight, flew forward, and then straight down. I could still feel the heat of the explosion in the distance, but I was safe, and more importantly, so was South America. I flew downwards until South America didn't look like it was just a picture on a map; man I must have flew really high up. I willed myself to fly even faster, not caring about anything else, but getting back to the fight, God knows how long my friends were fighting, and Allyson; Dragon Empress said she was fading fast, I HAD to get back ASAP. I flew down, until I was super close to the water, then I made a sharp turn, and soared back into the Amazon as fast as inhumanly possible. It didn't take much longer until I started to feel the presence of the war god; shortly afterwards, I started to see lightning and sun blasts. It was time to end this thing.

"_GUYS!" _I mentally screamed to them. "_I'M COMIN' IN HOT, TEE HIM UP!"_

A thunderbolt erupted out of the water, like a geyser, and Venom shot into the air, or at least he would have; I was flying so fast, he barely made it 10 feet in the air. I focused on my gravity point, which was Venom's face. That was my mark, my mission, my End Zone. I reeled my fist back, not caring about whether or not it would kill him, and yelled really loud. I was at the 50…the 40…. the 30...the 20…the 10.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!

The punch was so powerful, that a wave of wind spread out in every direction. Because Sunbird and Thunder-Man were so close to me, they were safe; the super sonic boom materialized just outside of them. Everything else was pretty much decimated. The wind was so powerful that entire trees exploded from the blast of wind. Leaves, vines, anything that couldn't take the blast, was torn to shreds. Even worse was that the wave spread out further than I thought it would; I imagine most of the Amazon felt the brunt of the impact. Anyway, the punch had achieved it's initial goal. All of the goo on Venom was so scattered that I could see the entire body of the guy inside. Still, the goo was lightly attached to him. I used my remaining momentum by spreading my hands, and bringing them together to form a sonic clap, making the goo flee from the guy entirely, as well as causing one hell of a wave to travel down the length of the river.. Instead of taking any chances, I immediately grabbed him by the shirt, and flicked him hard in the head, that would be enough to knock his lights out, maybe give him a concussion, but definitely not enough to kill him or nothing. I tossed him onto the shore, and turned to the goo floating in mid-air. We couldn't just leave it to fall in the water; it might infect a fish or something.

"_Thunder-Man!" _I mentally screamed to him. "_Speed up now!"_

A blur of lightning flashed for a second, and Thunder-Man materialized, gasping for breath.

"Dude, where the hell were you!" he shouted at me. "You were gone for like 10 minutes, and how fast are you going; I actually had to TRY to get this fast! Why…..why is your armor shredded? Are those spear points in your arms and legs, dude?"

I could clearly see that he had trouble maintaining his speed, the guy was surging with lightning, even at super speed, he usually didn't do that, unless he was running. He must have been tapping into all of his power to make it this far; we had to act fast before he dropped.

"I'm sorry about being late, bro," I started. "I promise i'll explain in a bit, but right now I need your help. Venom's goo, help me collect it all, we need to destroy it, before it can get onto something else."

Thunder-Man looked to the goo and nodded. I always appreciated how on board he could be with a random plan. He raced over the water and started to push the goo in varying places where it was sticking out. I flew around it, helping him contain and condense it. The effort took a couple seconds in real time, but we eventually managed to condense the goo into the size of a beach ball.

"_SUNBIRD!" _I mentally screamed to her. "_THE GOO, TORCH IT NOW!"_

At that moment, my body gave out on me. I didn't realize it, but the speed was wreaking havoc on my endurance levels, it was all I could do to make it back to shore. I managed to catch sight of a mini sun, about the size of a jumbo beach ball, burning away over the water. After a few seconds, the mini sun dissipated, and when the flare died out, there was no trace of the goo. I looked over at Sunbird, who I managed to land beside, as she lowered her arm, and collapsed into a unmoving heap on the ground. I quickly got up and ran over to her. Her face was super pale, and she was barely breathing, but she was alive; that was the most important part. Thunder-Man ran over to where we were, and looked at Allyson with more concern than I ever thought he could show; the guy was totally nuts over her, you'd have to be blind not to see that, but then why were they at each others throats, did I miss something?

"Is she ok?" he asked me.

"Dunno man," I said. "Let me ask her."

Before Thunder-Man could stop me from doing it, I yelled "SUNBIRD, YOU OK?!", right in her ear. She barely muttered a word, but her lips were moving, and I could hear faint singing. Her hand vaguely moved, but I saw her point up, and got the message.

"She needs to get closer to the sun, bro," I told Thunder-Man. "I got her, don't worry. Check on that other guy, and get the stone away from him, i'll be back in a few."

I scooped Sunbird into my arms, and took to the air, leaving Thunder-Man on the ground.

(Jason's Perspective)

I watched Grant take Allyson to the air for a few seconds, before snapping myself out of my trance; Grant was right, Allyson would be ok, there was nothing to worry about. That's what I had to keep telling myself so that my heart wouldn't give out on me. I trotted over to the blonde guy, who had one nasty welt on his forehead, and saw a red glow coming out of his left hand. I summoned my sword, and willed it to surge with voltage for good measure, before inching forward, and prying the stone from his hand. The energy surge was incredible, I could feel the strength and the power flowing over me, begging for me to let it in. I also felt something else from the stone: emotion. It was like this thing was alive in some way. It was angry that I had beat, or should I say, helped it beat it's former master. It knew that I was gonna lock it away forever, and hated me for that too; but there was something else in there too: respect. It was grudgingly proud that I had managed to lead my team to victory against such a strong opponent. I felt something stir within me, like a small surge of foreign energy. It felt good, it made me feel stronger. I didn't know it for sure, but I think the stone had just 'chosen' me. A few seconds later, my watch started bleeping again. I tapped the black button, and Fury spoke.

"Thunder-Man, report," he said. "What's your status?"

"We got the stone," I said. "It was the stone of Ares. We had to go a few rounds with Venom for it, but were all ok, Super-G and Sunbird are in the air, trying to get her juiced on some solar energy; the battle exhausted her."

"Venom was there?"

"Yeah, we neutralized him. Sunbird's ok too, thanks for asking."

"Good work, we're sending upgrades to your communicators. One activates a container for the stone, to block out it's energy, and make it safe for transport. The other activates handcuffs that neutralize super powers in metahumans, also making them safe for transport."

"Oh you won't have to worry about that Fury, we burned Venom's goo to nothingness, all that's left is some blonde guy."

"Ummm… ok then, sending upgrades now. Say 'activate container or cuffs', to summon either or. The jet is on it's way back to pick you and your team up, should be arriving in half a minute."

"Copy that, Fury, see you in a bit."

My watch flashed and bleeped again, on screen, the watch said: upgrade complete.

"Activate container," I said.

The watch bleeped again, and my watched glowed with a faint blue slight. Out of it, blue building block looking things burst out, and merged together. When the light died down, a clear cylinder, about a foot tall, was hovering over my watch. I grabbed it, opened the lid, and put the stone inside. The canister locked itself once I reattached the hood, and the stone started to float until it was between the bottom and top of the canister.

"What's that, bro?" Grant called down to me.

I looked up and saw him and Allyson, who was flying down by herself in her Sun Form, floating down towards me. They looked fresh and energized, even Grant, who was bleeding all over before going up, was as good as new, no spear points in his body, cuts all healed; although his suit still looked like a lion had it's way with it.

"A container for the stone," I said once they reached ground level. "It blocks out the energy the stone emits, making it safe around other people."

"Cool," said Grant.

I turned to Allyson.

"How you feeling, Sunbird," I asked her.

"Good," she said trying for a smile. "Going at lightspeed really took it's toll on my body, i'll have to get used to the feeling."

You got be in a seriously messed up world like mines, when you can just simply accept that you're friend said she'd have to "get used" to traveling at the speed of light.

"Ok then," I said. "Well, Fury also said that we have access to handcuffs we can use to bring in metahumans so...activate cuffs."

My watched glowed again, and a pair of handcuffs, shaped like a huge rectangle with holes in them, materialized. I grabbed them, walked over to the blonde guy, and moved his hands into the holes before locking them.

"The jet should be here any second," I told the two after I had restrained the blonde guy. "We just gotta wa-"

I was interrupted by the sound of a jet screeching through the sky and stopping right above our heads. The bottom of the jet opened up, like a giant garage, and a blue tractor beam shot out, lifting Grant, Allyson, the blonde guy, and myself into the air, and into the jet. We quickly strapped ourselves in (and the blonde guy), and were speeding our way back to the Helicarrier in no time.


	10. Chapter 10: More Training

**Chapter 10:More Training**

The ride back to the Helicarrier was uneventful. Grant took shotgun again, leaving Allyson and I in the back seat, which was still as awkward as ever. Plus, the novelty of the speed had pretty much worn off for all of us. Allyson could move at lightspeed, Grant and I could pretty much run at Mach 7 and rising. Once you've reached that milestone, a jet that could only travel at 2,000 mph became unimpressive. I could run to the Helicarrier faster than this slow hunk of metal. You'd think that we'd be buzzing out over what had just happened, I mean we took on Venom for Christ's sake. But that was the thing. Silently, we had all come to a general realization that, A: We were kids chosen to form a mutant strike team, B: In the past two hours, each of us had nearly died at least five times, C: We'd have to do it all over again if we ever wanted to go home again. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going soft or anything, and I won't deny the awesomeness of what the team did, but still, there were other things to consider. During the mission, to many things happened too fast. We fought plant monsters, tar monsters, even each other for a while. There wasn't enough time to process the amount of fear and danger of what we were doing then. Now there was, and it was mind numbing to say the least. I didn't want this. Neither of us did, except maybe Grant. Yet here we were, three teens employed by an international spy agency to do something that really should have been left to The Avengers, or some other hero people. Even if we managed to survive this thing, our lives would never be the same again, especially not Grant and mine's; but either way we had to see this through. None of us said anything, Allyson actually fell asleep against the window, I simply held on to the canister that contained a stone infused with the power of the greek war god, and enjoyed the ride back to S.H.I.E.L.D.

As soon as we got out of the jet, we were teleported straight to the meeting room, where Fury, Coulson, and the teacher's lounge were waiting for us. There faces were a mix of satisfaction, disbelief, and relief. That meant that they were happy we got the stone, surprised that we made it back alive, but extremely glad that we made it back alive and in one piece. More importantly, they were happy that we wouldn't have to be mailed back to our folks in body bags for a little while longer. Nobody said anything, not even Grant had the nerve to say anything loud and dumb. Seeing that there was a really big elephant in the room, I decided to break the ice and drown it. I held up the canister for everyone to see, and tossed it to Fury, who fumbled around a bit before managing to secure it in his hands.

"We did it," I said plainly. "Happy?"

That got the ball rolling pretty quick.

"Um.. well...good work team," Fury managed to say after a few seconds. "You've successfully managed to keep a powerful cosmic artifact out of the hands of Dr. Doom; plus you managed to bring down one of the world's deadliest villains, i'm impressed."

Grant immediately rushed in to share the spotlight.

"It was nothing," he said with that football jock swagger he was so proud of. "Just what happens when you put together a team of pure awesomeness. Next time give us something harder though, this was way too easy."

"You're one to talk," Mrs. Kennedy scoffed at him. "Look what you did to my suit, it'll take hours for the nanobots to repair that, not to mention the upgrades i'll have to program into it to make sure you don't die later on future missions."

"Ok, if this relationship is gonna be a smooth one, don't you think we need to establish the fact that these are our suits?"

"It's not your suit! I made them, if anything you're lucky I let you borrow it you-"

"Enough you two," Fury interrupted them. "You two divas can catfight over your pretty dresses later, right now we have more pressing matters to discuss; Jason, we need to debrief you and the team, explain how the mission proceeded."

"You sure you want that?" I asked him. "A lot of stuff went down in that oversized forrest."

Fury gave me a "go on" gesture, so I gathered my thoughts and started summarizing the mission. I went over the various fights we had with the plant monsters, mentioned the fight between Grant and I, that Allyson broke up, and, with the help of Grant and Allyson, I explained in detail about the fight with Venom and how we managed to take the stone from him. Grant jumped in at the part where I sent him off into the distance, and explained that he fought some kind of dragon lady and her army of dragon soldiers. Which explained why he was gone for so long. Apparently, this chick had some crazy Armageddon level weapons on her ship, that she was getting ready to launch on every continent on earth, releasing a never ending horde of demons from another world into ours. So whether by accident, dumb luck, good leadership, or destiny, I sent Grant on a side mission that saved the world while we were already on a mission saving the world. At this point, my ability to feel shock was pretty much destroyed; if something like this could happen on any given mission, every possibility was now fair game. Fury contemplated on that huge rush of information we gave him for a little while. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he responded.

"So," he started. "You intentionally divided your team against an arcane enhanced supervillain, potentially sending one of your teammates to his death?"

That hit hard. Again, you never really know the gravity of these kinds of situations until after they're over, and it was getting clearer and clearer about all of the questionable decisions I made in the field. The thought of it was almost enough to make me want to quit.

"Well, I didn't mean to send him off to an ambush," I started, trying to get the lump out of my throat. "It was meant to be an in and out operation, I didn't know there was some sort of dragon lady tyrant waiting in the distance."

"Nevertheless, your leadership nearly became the death of this team, maybe I was wrong to give you a shot in the field, maybe I should lock you up right now and be done with it."

Before I could say anything, or should I say before I started shooting lightning all over the place, Grant spoke up.

"Wait a minute," he said, clearly worried and pissed off. "That's not fair, you can't do that man. What is it, 'Let's beat up on Jason Day'? In case you haven't caught on, we got the stone, we made it back alive, and it's all thanks to everyone here. Sure we had a little bit of trouble along the way, but Jason always managed to help come up with a plan to get us through alright. Besides, we're dealing with magic rocks made from the powers of greek gods; that one just turned the environment into a deathtrap, how is anybody supposed to plan for that on their first try? More than that, we're still figuring out our team flow. It's getting better but we need more practice, more time to get accustomed to each other's abilities, as well as improve our own. Sure, some of our plans didn't go exactly to plan, but it takes a great leader to be able to adapt and change plans when they go wrong. Jason did that. If anything, our divide and conquer strategy was more fruitful than we could have ever hoped for. Allyson can move at the speed of light, and has enough firepower to put an atomic bomb to shame. Jason is basically a thunder/speed god with dreads. Me? I'm basically a flying Hercules, plus I figured out that I can survive more than 2000 degrees of fire, and lift nearly 100,000 tons; and still were just scratching the surface of what we can do, I just know it. So don't give Jason such a hard time. We may be a little banged up, but he led us to success, I don't know about you, but i'm proud to call him team captain."

Again, you really don't understand how much it rocked to have this guy as a friend. I don't know where he got it from, but this guy could make anyone seem good, even me. If anything, maybe he really should have been team leader.

"Wow," said Fury. "You seem really content to play lapdog for Mr. Fuller. Grant, I thought you had a bit more self-esteem than that."

"What did you say?" Grant asked with a slight edge in his voice. Things had to move on quickly before someone lost a head.

"Ok, ok, ok," Allyson quickly piped up. "Everybody just calm down, you're all acting like idiots."

"Excuse me?" Fury asked as he turned to her.

"You heard me," she said with a small gulp, poor thing probably never talked back to an authority figure in her life. "Listen Colonel, I understand your concerns. Jason wasn't exactly Captain America material out there, but it was his first time, and he didn't do too bad. In a lot of ways, Grant could lead the team too, but he's more of our powerhouse, our secret missile against the enemy; missiles can't shoot themselves. Maybe he's right, maybe Jason will get better over time, but we'll never know if we don't give him a fair shot to improve. I'm kinda glad he's leader too, I would've cracked under the pressure after that plant made Hydra."

That managed to calm things down a bit, or at least negate some of the angst in the air.

"Well, if we're done with that mushy display of affection," said Fury. "Let's get to the part where I hand out punishments. So to be fair, who's idea was it to send Grant out into the distance, while fighting Venom?"

"Mine's," Grant and I said at the same time.

We both glared at each other for a few seconds.

"No way man," I said. "It was my call, my decision, I won't let you take the fall for that."

"But dude," he said. "I had just as much of a part in planning that takedown scheme as you, besides you don't deserve to be punished for being a good leader, it's not fair."

"It doesn't matter bro," I said clapping him on the shoulder. "I'm team leader, I have the final call on every decision we make; likewise, I have to take full responsibility for everything that goes wrong."

I turned to face Fury.

"It was my call sir, give me your best shot."

Fury started me down for a few seconds, before turning to his staff crew.

"What did I tell you?" he asked them, as if winning a bet. "I told you this kid had spunk, never doubted him for a moment."

Everyone started grumbling and nodding their heads in grudging acknowledgement, even Mrs. Kennedy shrugged half heartedly. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but this was way too confusing, I needed some kind of answer for this.

"Hold up," I interrupted them. "I'm in trouble right? Can we hurry up and issue the detention slips already."

"Don't worry about it kid." said Fury with a small smirk. "That was a pop quiz, and you passed with flying colors."

"Huh?"

"You were never in any trouble to begin with, we just needed to see whether or not you passed as a good leader. Your teammates clearly have faith in you, and you've demonstrated that you have the courage to stand up and take responsibility as a leader, although I have to admit Grant has you beat on talking. But as far as leaders go, i've seen better, i've seen worse, you're not so bad, might as well give you a shot."

"So I get to stay on the team?"

"You led an amatur team through a monster infested jungle, and managed to take down a war crazed super villain; anyone that can do that on the first try is good to go in my books."

I exhaled in relief (what? I was starting to like this job). A few seconds later, Fury reached into his trench coat, fumbled around the pockets for a little bit, and pulled out his clicker (he must have really loved that thing). He pressed a button near the bottom of it, and a felt something in my leg heat up. At first I thought it was just me, but when I looked around, Grant and Allyson were also looking at their legs like there was a bomb in their pants. I was thinking the same thing, but then I realized that the blinking was coming from my actual pants that was beneath my armor; that was where I kept my keycard. After a while, the heat subsided and my leg felt normal again.

"What the heck was that?" I asked Fury.

"I just upgraded your keycards," he said. "For as long as this task force is active, each of you will have full access to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s databases, training facilities, and weapon storages. Furthermore, you are free to move around the Helicarrier as you wish, but no running in the halls."

"Wait a minute," said Allyson. "Does that mean we're S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now?"

"More like interns," Fury said. "But yeah, for the time being, me casa, su casa."

"Sure," said Mrs. Kennedy in a tone that reeked of sarcasm. "Let's give the little teenagers full access to an international agency responsible for the fate of the world, this won't come back to bite us in the butt. So, what now Mr. Fuller?"

She and the rest of the staff looked at me expectantly, like I had an answer that was worth a million dollars.

"Uhh, what do you mean?" I said, letting my cluelessness show.

Mrs. Kennedy rolled her eyes.

"I was hoping you'd actually have an answer for once instead of your typical naivete." she said. "For your information boy, we can't hold your hand for the rest of this operation, some of us have to work for a living. The team is now in your "capable" hands. You will be in charge of things like planning team meetings, strategies, training sessions, or you can sit in your rooms all day and eat junk food until the next mission; your call."

Oh, well why didn't she say so? Honestly , sometimes I think, no, I KNOW this woman loves to watch me suffer.

"Well," I said after thinking for a few secs. "First of all, i'm ordering the team to get some rest, shower, and eat. After 6 PM, we're gonna take a look at the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases. Fury, if you have information on the people Doom is most likely working with, i'd appreciate you setting up a portfolio for me, because the team and I are gonna spend as much time as it takes studying everything you know about them. Strengths, weaknesses, powers, the whole 9 yards; we got lucky with Venom, and found the chink in his armor by accident, we may not be so lucky next time. Tomorrow, we dive into some heavy duty training, figure out more about our powers, improve our skills, and work on breaking our limits. Until the next stone pops up, we'll just rinse and repeat."

Fury and the rest of the staff nodded in agreement.

"Very well then Mr. Fuller," said Fury. "You and your team are now dismissed, enjoy the rest of your day."

"Oh, before you go," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I need you to deactivate your battle suits, Grant's needs major repairs, and you and Allyson may be in need of some other upgrades as well, just press the red button on you're communicators and say 'Power Down'.

We did as she instructed and our suits flashed off of us. I expected to feel a lot lighter on my feet, but Mrs. Kennedy was right, the suits weighed practically nothing. We exited the meeting room, managed to find our way back to the elevators, and took the ride to our individual floors.

"Ok guys," I said through my communicator (it seemed like our mental connection only worked with the suits on). "Remember, do what you have to do now, but after dinner, we hit the books."

"No problem Jason," Grant messaged me back. "Never miss study hall with the team."

"Same here," said Allyson. "I'll be wherever you need me."

I changed out of my clothes, which were drenched in sweat, and put them in a blue hamper that was in the corner by the TV. I climbed into the shower, washed off for a good 30 minutes, now starting to feel how sore I was from the battle, and then put on a black T-shirt and some blue jeans. I climbed into bed, and checked the time; 3:15 PM. I figured I could get at least two hours of sleep before going down to dinner, so I didn't waste any time; in about 3 seconds, my body shut down, and I was in dreamsville.

Normally I don't dream, but today was the exception. To be honest, it didn't make much sense at first. Just a bunch of flashing colors everywhere on a sea of black space. After a while, I started to hear voices, like whispering people having multiple conversations. Again, still not much sense. As the dream progressed, the many voices started to ebb away until I was left with only two. They didn't sound like anyone I knew, in fact, I couldn't even tell if the voices were male or female, but I could hear what they were saying as clear as day.

"_An interesting turn of events," _one of them said.

"_Yes, I did not expect such an outcome, perhaps we have put our faith in the wrong faction." _said the other.

"_Perhaps, but it is too soon to make such rash judgements, this was only the first, more will follow."_

"_At this pace, the two will face each other very soon, can you imagine the outcome of such a battle?"_

"_Again, you seek answers too soon, let these things unfold in time, as they are meant to."_

"_Fine, but recent events trouble my certainty of our gamble, if all does not go as planned-"_

"_It will, it will, things are just beginning, the next test will prove to be one of the more difficult ones, for both of them."_

"_I can hardly wait."_

My dream faded away, and I was awoken by the sound of my alarm.

To be honest, I didn't give my dream as much thought as I probably should have. But that was because I had initially blamed it all on post-traumatic mission syndrome, as well as the fact that I was really freaking hungry. I rushed down to the cafeteria, where Grant and Allyson were already at our usual table, eating to their hearts content. I quickly grabbed as much food as I could fit on one tray, and sat down with them. Just like yesterday, we didn't talk, we just ate. Part of it was because of the fact that we were super ultra hungry, but there was more to it today. Part of the tension was between Allyson and I; we were still on rocky terms at best, and doubt we'd ever talk to each other again unless we had to. The other tension was just leftover jitters from the mission. They were fading fast but they were still there. After we finished up at around 5:50, we decided to head down to the databases a little early. Fury kept true to his word and set up a file of Doom's potential partners. To access those files, I would have to go to room 175A, and follow the standard procedures to access the files, whatever that meant (by the way, Fury sent me the instructions via my communicator).Grant, Allyson, and I walked there in silence. Once, at the room, I swept my key card in the slot, walked in, and looked around.

The room was a technological madhouse. There were computers everywhere. most of them had so many weird looking buttons, switches, and dials on them, that I wouldn't even dream of touching them. In the center of the room, there was some sort of circular table looking device that had a tabletop with weird looking streaks of light traveling across it; the thing looked like a really big fluorescent motherboard. I inserted my key card into a slot in the side of the table, placed my hand on the table top, and after it scanned me, a robotic feminine voice said: 'Biometric signature confirmed. Welcome, Jason Fuller. The table top flashed really bright, and a hologram of a woman's face with empty eye sockets materialized in the air.

"Whoa!" said Grant. "Talk about high tech!"

"Affirmative," said the hologram. "Stark Industries does indeed produce some of the most advanced technology in the world, I am a product of the company's many inventions. I am S.E.R.A; Schematic Encyclopedia and Retrieval Assistant, how may I be of service?"

"Retrieval Assistant?" I asked. "So you're like some sort of holographic librarian?"

"Precisely Master Jason, I have access to every public, private, and federal interface in the world; how may I be of service?"

"Ooookaayy," said Grant. "Someone please tell me that i'm not the only one who's slightly bugging out here."

"Grant," said Allyson. "How can anything in this place surprise you after what just happened today?"

"I don't remember swinging my axe at a hologram."

"Well you can take a swing at it tomorrow." I said. "Right now we have work to do. S.E.R.A., Fury said that he set up a file for me containing potential members that are working with Doom. Can you upload that file for me please?"

"Of course Master Jason," she said. "One moment."

She went still for a few seconds while random holograms of various people flashed really really fast. To a normal person, these images would've lasted only long enough for half a second, but my enhanced perception kicked in. I saw pictures of various super villains like: Dr Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, Rhino, and various other people I already knew about (what? I live in New York, Spider-Man busts up villains like these guys all the time). However, there were a lot of pictures of people I didn't know about, like: some guy wearing weird clothes a horned helmet and wielding a spear. Also a gorgeous blonde woman wearing a green getup who was accompanied by a huge guy wielding a battle axe. After all of these images were done loading, a holographic file popped up over the table.

"File uploaded," said S.E.R.A. "Do you wish for me to read the files in alphabetical order, or by personal preference?"

"Let's start with the files of the people that the news has already confirmed to have played a part in the St. Mark Industries robberies," I said. "After that then we can go in alphabetical order."

"As you command. Let's get started."

The amount of studying that the team did on Doom and his squad was extensive to say the least. First, we did our homework on Dr. Doom, Green Goblin, Loki (I figured out that he was the guy with the horned helmet), and Magneto. Doom was definitely not a pushover, what with his suit, sorcery abilities, and army of Doombots. But considering the fact that we were immune to magic, plus we had experience with large armies of robots, we figured we'd be ok in a fight against him. Goblin was almost completely overlooked. The only thing that made him a light contender was his ability to bench 9 tons. Other than that, all we had to do was avoid his pumpkin bombs and get him off of his glider. Super speed and lightning strikes would be all we would need. Loki and Magneto were the only ones off the list that actually gave us some concern. I know Loki gets a bad rep because he keeps getting his chops busted by Thor and the Avengers, but then again, who could beat The Avengers? Anyway, Loki was a powerhouse as far as we were concerned. He could lift 50 tons on his own. Not nearly as much as Grant could, but still way more than I could. Based off of the footage we saw of his many fights against the Avengers, his skill with a spear was average at best, but I still didn't know how to fight with a spear yet; Allyson would have to cross that bridge if we ever crossed it. The only thing that mattered was his magic. Most of it was just blasts and illusions, but I also saw his ability to switch bodies; that worried me a lot. After a lot of strategizing and playing out different scenarios, the team pretty much deduced the fact that the best way to take him down, was for Grant to knock him out faster than he could blink. We went over the profiles of a lot more villains that were most likely be working with Doom. Among the list were people like Baron Mordo and Enchantress, two more magic users. There was some weird looking thing on a flying chair called M.O.D.O.K, and a guy named The Executioner, who had an axe so big that Grant was probably jealous. Also, there was a whole gang of Spider-Man villains like Rhino, Mysterio, Dr. Octopus, and some stupid guy in an oven mitt looking costume named The Shocker on the list of potential Doom flunkies. We studied, planned, and strategized with this massive amount of data for 5 hours straight, it was actually 11 pm before we trudged through it all, and let the team off for the night.

"Finally," said Grant said as he stood up and yawned. "Thought we'd never get to sleep until next week.

"Nah man," I said laughing at him tiredly. "I just wanted to get through this data now so we could spend all of tomorrow training."

"So you're gonna work us to death physically now?" Allyson asked me. "You won't have much of a team left if that happens."

"Oh please," said Grant. "Like he's gonna let a little thing like death stop us from training."

Grant and I busted out laughing, even Allyson smirked and giggled a little bit.

"Don't worry, i'll leave enough of you guys left to see the next day," I said. "But we gotta get into some heavy training, we did good as a team for our first time, now we have to work on improving ourselves, as well as our teamwork dynamics."

"Ok then," said Allyson. "You're the boss, so what's our first move."

"S.E.R.A?" I asked the computer.

"Yes Master Jason?" she responded.

"I know this may seem like a far fetched question, but is it possible for you to scan our bodies, or our DNA, or whatever? I wanna see if you can analyze or powers and their potential for development."

"Of course Master Jason, give me a moment while I upload the proper programs."

S.E.R.A.'s face went slack for a moment, which was weird considering the fact that she was a hologram. After a few seconds, the tabletop flashed really bright, and S.E.R.A.'s face went back into focus.

"Please place your hands on the designated areas," she said.

I cautiously craned my neck to get a better glimpse at what she was talking about. On the table top flashing in bright white lights, were six outlines of handprints. I put two and two together.

"Uhh quick question S.E.R.A.," I said. "Will this hurt?"

"Yes," she said bluntly. "However, the pain will only be temporary and will not have any lasting effects on your body or your abilities."

I looked over at Grant and Allyson, asking them the silent question of whether or not they wanted to go through with this. Grant nodded his head, trying not to let his nervousness show. Allyson took a deep breath and nodded as well. We all simultaneously put our hands in the outlines, and the table flashed lightly. At first I thought that was it, maybe S.E.R.A was kidding about the pain, maybe it was some sort of robotic humor. Then the pain hit me so fast, I didn't even remember if I had the time to scream. It was as if someone had injected burning nails into very nerve in my body, I literally felt the pain from my head to my toes. The pain was excruciating, but like S.E.R.A. said, only temporary. After three seconds, the pain started to subside, in fact, it felt like the pain was literally exiting through my arms and hands. The tabletop flashed again, and three DNA diagrams sprung into the air where S.E.R.A's face used to be. I looked at the palms of my hands, which were as raw and as red as an uncooked steak, and flexed my fingers, trying to regain the feeling in them. Grant and Allyson were doing the same.

"Dang S.E.R.A.," I complained. "What did you do to us?"

Her face appeared in the top corner of the DNA diagrams.

"I injected all of you with 3 million nanites that infiltrated your bloodstream," she said. "Once inside, the nanites duplicated all of your cells using an advanced synthetic duplication method that is essential in cloning technology. After the data was collected, I recalled the nanites out of your blood stream, via your hands. With the data they have collected I will be able to fully analyze current and future developments in your mutant powers. The results of the analysis can be expected to be completed around eight hours from now."

"Oh," I said. "Well then good work, send the results to my communicator once you're done with that."

"As you wish Master Jason."

"Hey S.E.R.A?" Grant asked her.

"Yes Master Grant?" she responded.

Oh, never mind," he said with a smirk. "I just wanted to see if you'd call me 'Master'."

Allyson and I both face palmed him.

"If there's nothing else, we can go now," I said. "Tomorrow, we'll be working on skill first."

"What do you mean skill?" Grant asked me.

"Hand-to-hand and armed combat." I said. "We need to be able to fight with a lot more skill than just straight up brawling, plus as your armor portrayed, a few sword lessons might not be out of the question."

"Amen to that bro, but what about the hand-to-hand thing?"

"I can help you guys there," Allyson spoke up.

"Huh?" Grant and I asked at the same time.

"I've studied Kung-Fu and fencing since I was six," she said. "If you weren't so strong or so fast, i'd probably be able to kick both of your butts."

"So you think you can teach us Kung-Fu in like three hours?" I asked her.

"I can teach you all of the basics and some advanced moves, after that you should be able to work through the rest at your own pace."

"Cool, we'll start that at 9 AM, oh and another question, I saw you kick some serious butt with that spear while you were fighting Venom; any chance you could teach me and Grant some of that stuff too?

"One thing at a time Jason! But yeah I can whip you dorks into shape."

"Ok cool, we'll work on the Kung-Fu stuff until Lunch, then we'll take an hour break. After that, we hit the swords. Grant, you're gonna spend an hour with Nightcrawler until you can wield a sword like a pro."

"But i'm more of an axe kind of guy," he said.

"Then do both," I said. "Get some sort of dual wielding thing going on or something."

"Ok, i'll see what I can do, anything to keep me from getting sliced like a christmas ham again."

"Good man," I said. "Anyway, while you're doing that, Allyson and I will be working on spear stuff. After an hour, we'll switch up, I wanna get to work on learning how to fight with a shield. We'll train with weapons until dinner, take another hour break, and then we'll get to work on improving our powers in any way that we can; S.E.R.A's analysis should help us out with that. We'll do power practice until 11PM and then we'll call it a day. Any questions?"

"Yeah," said Allyson in a "as-a-matter-of-fact" tone. "Do we get to use the bathroom at anytime during the day?"

"That's what the hour breaks are for," I said. "So shall we call this meeting adjourned and get some shut eye?"

They both nodded, and we all took our leave. We went directly to the elevators, took it to our floors and I shut myself inside my room. I didn't bother to change into my PJ's before crashing into bed, I just crawled under the covers at let the sleepy time take me away. I didn't dream for the night. Just as well; I had enough to deal with as it was.

My alarm woke me up at 8 AM the next day. I quickly got out of bed and brushed my teeth real fast. I had half a mind to just go down to breakfast in what I was wearing, but then I remembered I would probably need some more flexible pants. I went through my closest, grabbed some black workout pants with silver stripes, as well as a red muscle shirt that had the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on the left chest (yes, all of my shirts have the S.H.I. . emblem on it). I made a beeline for the cafeteria, got the same thing I always did, and sat down at the team's usual table and started eating. It was like thirty minutes and two trays later before Grant and Allyson joined me. In fact, they came to the cafeteria at exactly the same time. They were both wearing black workout pants, and Grant was wearing a green muscle shirt, while Allyson was wearing a white tank top. Now I may not have had any friends before being drafted to this team, but I could read body language really well. Grant and Allyson had just got through talking about me, I knew that for sure. I wanted to confront them about it, but I knew this wasn't the time. I was team leader, I had to keep it together. So if that meant burying my feelings of anger and jealousy so that we could get through training, so be it. We ate breakfast in a hurry, while making small talk about about battle strategies, TV shows, and video games. It was really awkward for everyone because Allyson and I still weren't talking to each other. That meant that Grant was pretty much the conversation exchange way; if Allyon and I said anything to each other, it was through Grant. Poor guy was probably overwhelmed under the pressure. Anyway, after breakfast we all went to room 135X, which we pretty much adopted as our official training room. I called ahead and booked Nightcrawler for a session starting at 1pm, but for now, Allyson was in charge of training, which was why I wasn't really surprised to see a couple of punching bags (one made of steel) hanging from the ceiling.

"Ok," said Allyson who immediately went into teacher training mode. "I've got three hours to whip you punks into shape, so let's not waste any time."

She started to glow, and I immediately caught on. I shifted into Speed Mode and so did Grant (yeah I know, Blitz). This was a smart move. In Speed Mode every second in real time was like a whole minute to me. Do the math and instead of three hours, we had over six in training. At the speed we were going at, I could regenerate energy at a comfortable pace and still keep my head in the game. Not bad planning on Allyson's part.

"Ok," she said. "First, let's work on some basic stances."

Starting out, the first few minutes (in real time) was tough. Allyson taught us the horse stance, which was pretty much like squatting. The forward stance, a kind of leg stretch stance. The cross stance, or resting stance as she called it, resembled criss-cross sitting, but without actually sitting. We also learned the drop stance, which was almost the exact reverse of the forward stance. Finally, we learned one of the most recognizable Kung-Fu stances, the cast stance. That was about balancing 90% of your body weight on the back leg, and balancing 10% on the front. Learning how to do the stances were easy, however, Allyson made us learn the correct way to transit into each stance. We had to learn how to do a lot of waving arm movements that resembled windmills, arm movements that looked like snake and crane type stances, all while learning how to balance all of our weight on our legs. The first few stances were easy enough for me and Grant. It took a few tries( we had to ask Allyson to redo the motions again and again), but after a few minutes, we could do the horse, forward, and resting stances like it was nothing. The drop and the cast stances took a lot longer to get the hang of. First off, the movements were harder to remember in the drop stance; it involved all of that snake like moving. In real time, Grant and I spent 5 minutes on that, which is 10 in super speed terms. The cast stance involved me balancing a lot of weight on my right leg, which wasn't too hard to do, but my arm placing was always off, and Allyson was a harsh grader. Again, Grant and I got the hang of it in time, but I was really frustrated by the end. We had just spent an hour in speed terms mastering fake airbending moves; someone had to answer for that.

"Ok, what was the purpose of all of that?" I asked Allyson once she had finished drilling us again and again, making sure we had the stances down.

She looked me straight in the eye, which was still frightening when she was lit up in golden light.

"Because you ungrateful, ignorant troll," she started real meanish. "You and Grant needed a base level of coordination and balance before you could move on to actual basic combat moves. If you think you can find someone better to train you, please go ahead."

"Ok first of all," I said trying not to lose my cool. "Don't talk to me that way, i'm not a child. Plus i'm pretty sure this whole ship is filled with people who can kick your a-"

"What he means is," Grant immediately jumped in, flashing me the best 'stand down' warning ever. "Is that he's very thankful for you showing us the ropes, and he's just really eager to get down to the nitty gritty stuff."

Allyson and I stared each other down, silently calling our battle off for the time being.

"Fine," said Allyson. "Just remember who's the master."

"As long as you remember who's team leader." I retorted.

She humphed at me, and moved on. We moved towards the two punching bags, and Allyson took up a fighting stance at the non-steel one. She took a deep breath and started punching it. At first I thought she was gonna drill us on the proper way to punch, but she kept pounding the bag for quite some time. It was actually impressive to watch, she punched at a very fast, but steady and unpaused pace with so much power and focus that I expected her to punch a hole straight through the bag. Finally, after what had seemed like 100 punches, she stopped and turned around.

"In case you didn't catch on, Rocky Balboa," I started. "Grant and I kinda already know how to throw a punch."

She flashed me an extreme "no-duh" look.

"Obviously you can punch," she said. "But this isn't about simply throwing punches, I need to test your endurance levels, the longer you can punch, the longer you can fight."

"I can simply recharge if I get tired," I said. "And Grant doesn't get tired from regular workouts, so what are you gonna do about that?"

She walked up to my face and started me in the eye. Again, it was so hard not to cower under gaze when she was glowing like a sun goddess.

"You," she said, pointing a finger at me. "Won't be recharging anything until I say you can."

"And you," she said pointing to Grant. "After i'm done with you, you'll wish you were fighting that dragon lady again."

Grant looked at me, a look of terror and amusement plastered on his face.

"Now," said Allyson. "It's your turn, I want each of you to give me a thousand punches."

"A THOUSAND?!" Grant and I exclaimed at the same time.

"What's the matter?" Allyson asked us with an annoyed smirk. "Can't handle it?"

"I dunno," I said "Can you?"

"I've practiced punching things since I was six, of course I can, in sets of hundreds, just like I want you two to do."

"Oooohhhhh," me and Grant said together. 1000 punches at once was impossible; 100 at at time was slightly less so.

Allyson directed me and Grant to our individual punching bags and took a step back.

"You have until the count of twenty to get in 100 hits. Ready, Begin!"

At first it was super easy, I started with five hard punches to get the bag into the air, and then I started a straight up punching barrage. Punch after punch after punch, I kept going, using my anger and concentration to fuel my attacks. After punch number 60, my arms started to burn. I simply closed my eyes and focused even harder on keeping the chain going. Allyson was already down to ten by the time I had reached punch 80; I had to really push it if I wanted to make my mark. I made my arms go faster, despite their desperate cries for mercy, and with two seconds to spare, I managed to make it to 100 punches. My first thought was 'oh God that was brutal'. My second thought was on how much my arms hurt. Seriously, they felt super heavy, and hurt like crap; good thing I had the good ol' electric nurse to help me out. I was about to focus on electricity surging through my hands, but Allyson had other plans.

"No you don't!" Allyson scolded me. "No electricity until 900 more punches, no exceptions."

"But my arms feel like ankle weights," I complained. "How am I supposed to punch the bag when I can barely lift my arms?"

"That's your problem, you have about 5 seconds to figure it out, just do whatever it is Grant's doing; he looks alright."

That was a total dick move on her part, but I grudgingly let it slide and got ready for another punch barrage. If it meant shutting her up, i'd keep going until my arms fell off. If only I knew how close that actually was to becoming a reality.

For the next few minutes in real time, my arms learned a lesson in true pain. From 200-400 punches, the pain in my arms went from uncomfortable, to straight up excruciatingly unbearable. 500-700, my arms lost all feeling; which made it both easier and harder to keep up the punches. 800-1000, was when my arms felt like they were bleeding. It was as if my bones were taken out and replaced with hot rods. My lungs were struggling to get air, and my chest felt like someone stuck a hammer in there. Finally, after I had achieved what was probably the hardest physical attempt of my life, I sat on the floor and just let go. Everything in my upper body areas hurt, but through the pain, I managed to patch myself up with voltage. The pain in my arms, and chest went away immediately, and after I blinked the spots out of my eyes, I managed to bring myself to my feet.

"How do you guys feel?" Allyson asked us.

"I feel great," said Grant, who was barely winded by the exercise. "I could do this all day."

"I'm better now," I said. "My body hurt like hell getting through that, but i'm fueled up and ready for Round 2"

"You should be," Allyson said. "I'd be disappointed if you couldn't, given your... improved physique."

I didn't know what that meant, but then I looked at my arms. Now before you make any jokes, I just want you to know that I was much stronger than I looked beforehand. I wasn't scrawny, I wasn't a bodybuilder, I was average muscular build for my age; plus I always managed to beat up people who were stronger than me. Anyway, my arms had gone through a major change. It was like someone had pumped me full of steroids and left the meter running, because my arms were twice as big as they used to be, and so were my pecs. Don't get me wrong, my arms weren't as huge as Grant's massive pythons, but by comparison, I was a 7 out of 10 on the muscle scale.

"Wow," I said. "I should have done this sooner, this is a nice step up from going to the gym.

"I know man," said Grant. "You look like quarterback material, learn how to throw a football and you might be able to go pro."

We both laughed for a little bit before Allyson cleared her throat and demanded that we do one more set. I wanted to complain, but she'd never let herself get talked out of giving me extra workouts. As was such, I didn't even need much of a break anyway. With my new muscles, apparently came some new endurance, because on this set, I made it to the 700's before my arms started to hurt. After I juiced my arms following the set of punches, I felt like I could punch for days; Grant on the other hand, was actually showing signs of fatigue.

"You alright?" I asked him. "Looks like father time is starting to catch up to ya bro."

"Hey, i'm not that old man," Grant responded, still sporting his trademark stupid grin. "Just need a minute to catch my breath."

"Sorry Grant," said Allyson. "No rest for the weary, we gotta keep this pain train moving, all aboard, let's go."

We worked on roundhouse kicks next. Allyson took us through the motions: planting your feet, and kicking the bag at just the right angle, with just the right part of our foot. We worked on that for a good while. After Grant and I had mastered roundhouse kicks on our right leg, Allyson had us switch to our left; again that took a good while for me to get the hang of. Let me set you guys straight about one thing. From my perspective, we had been training for at least three hours. In real time, it was only 10:05 AM, which meant that we still had time to kill before lunch. Allyson didn't waste a single millisecond, and immediately got us on learning combinations. She explained that the most important thing in fighting was keeping your opponent off-balance, and digging in deep when it was time for the finisher. She started us off by teaching us a "simple" combo. It went like this: right puch five times, roundhouse kick from thee right three times, the same on the left, and to finish it all off, one powerful reverse kick (we learned reverse, forward, spin, jumping spin, and sweeping kicks). After all of the prep we had, combos were easy, once I got into my rhythm, it was easier than riding a bike. Allyson drilled me and Grant on various different combos, seeing how well we could adapt and remember certain directions. It was long and brutal, but by the time it was over, I was starting to feel like a black Jackie Chan.

Finally, we learned offensive and defensive moves. From flipping people, to learning how to perform and escape various types of locks, Allyson drilled us hard for 35 minutes straight. Once it was 10:50, we all shifted out of Speed Mode, and Allyson brought out a little surprise for me and Grant. She pressed a button on her watch, and a titan robot flashed into the room.

"Final test," she said. "Grant, I asked for that robot to be programed with an intermediate level of Kung-Fu skill, your job is to beat it."

"Sounds like fun," said Grant. "But don't go crying to Fury when I break your new toy."

He set up a defensive stance and attacked with a fast right punch. The robot simply swept his arm away and punched him in the gut with a right hook; if Grant could've felt that, it definitely would have hurt. Allyson and I watched him fight for the first minute, and he wasn't half bad. After the titan punched Grant in the gut, he tried hitting it again with a left hook. The titan grabbed his arm, but Grant had anticipated that. As soon as the titan gripped his arm, he turned around, grabbing the titan's hand with his right, and flipped it over his shoulder. Grant held on to it's arm and stomped hard on it's shoulder, dislocating it. The titan swept Grant's leg out from under him, but once it got up, Grant did the same thing and even managed to propel himself off of the ground into a jumping spin kick, sending the titan soaring across the room. Grant was doing awesome, and I was enjoying the fight until I realized one thing; why wasn't I fighting too?

"So what about me?" I asked Allyson. "Or did you forget that I still exist?"

"I didn't get you a robot," she started with a dangerous fire in her voice. "Because you're sparring against me, and i'm gonna enjoy mopping the floor with you."

We both took up a defensive stance and started each other down for a good five seconds, each of us looking for an opening.

"You gonna hit me anytime soon?" Allyson asked me. "I don't have all day."

That did it.

I rushed her and swung at her with a right hook. She grabbed my wrist but I anticipated that and flipped her over my shoulder. Whether or not I was actually gonna hit her is debatable, but I never got the chance to find out. Apparently, Allyson had managed to land on her feet, and she immediately kicked me in the head from below, causing me to stagger backwards. Quicker than I could recover, I felt her punch me twice and kick me once in the face, followed by a really hard roundhouse kick to the chest that sent me crashing to the floor.

"Ooohhhhh!" she taunted me as I got up. "That looked like it really hurt; you wanna quit now?"

I rushed her again, determined to take her down. I assaulted her with a couple of punches, which she easily countered. Afterwards, I tried for a roundhouse kick. She ducked it and tried to sweep my legs but I backflipped over it, and once I landed, I launched myself into a low flying kick that made contact with her body, sending her tumbling a few feet away. This time it was her turn to look pissed off. She stood up, not even wincing, stared me down and charged me again; this time, we were both equally serious about causing-each other pain, and you better believe we were out for blood.

Allyson rushed me with a barrage of punches and kicks. I managed to block and counter most of them, but she still managed to hit me a good few times in the face, plus some really good kicks to the gut. We went on like this for five minutes. Occasionally I would manage to land a punch or two on her face, but for the most part, she was really kicking my ass around. I managed to get a slight upper hand in the fight when Allyson punched at me with a right, that I caught, and twisted her wrist. She winced out in pain (which I felt slightly bad about), but on a reflex, punched at me with her left, which I also grabbed and twisted. Allyson somehow managed to turn around, also making me do a 180, and I felt her jump. Immediately I knew what she was trying to do, backflip to dropkick combo; that would've hurt a lot. Instead of that happening, I counter flipped, managing to plant my feet in her chest, and land perfectly on top of her as she crashed into the ground. I figured that would be the end of it, in fact I was kinda worried that I had actually hurt her. That was before she grabbed my hair and slammed her elbow into my forehead.

The pain was so sharp, I immediately saw five different colors flash, and my head wouldn't stop throbbing. If Allyson was in this much pain, she didn't let it show, because she immediately pushed me off of her, and I felt her grab my arm, and put me in a cross arm breaker. The pain from being in the lock was almost on par with the one in my head. Allyson held her grip tight, she even had my head locked in between her legs. And, yes my arm did feel like it was being pulled out of it's socket, they don't call it a cross arm breaker for nothing.

"GIVE UP!" Allyson screamed at me. "GIVE UP, OR I'LL TEAR YOUR ARM IN HALF!"

Believe me, in the state she was in, she probably wasn't bluffing. Even so, I had had enough of her yelling at me, telling me what to do, and disrespecting me nonstop. Even if it killed me, I would not give up. I focused everything I had into getting her off of me. There was only one way to do it, and if I failed I wouldn't get another chance at it. I used my free arm and managed to swiftly grab my trapped arm with it. As soon as I had a lock on it, I pulled my arm towards my body along with Allyson (good thing she didn't weigh that much). If she looked surprised, I couldn't tell you; my eyes were shut tight in concentration. I pulled her over my other arm, managed to stand to my feet, and with my free arm, I punched her dead in her face, making her left go of my right arm. She fell to the floor, and before she could get up, I wrapped my arms around her neck in a choke hold.

"Your turn," I said in a strained voice. "Tap out, or black out."

She tried to struggle against me, but my new and improved muscles were more than capable of keeping her restrained. After 30 seconds, she tapped her hand frantically against my arms, and I immediately let go. I would have offered to help her up, but there was way more venom and anger in that fight than you realize. Silently, Allyson and I were fighting because of her refusal to accept the fact that I had no problem hurting people who would stand against me. I wasn't a bully, and I wasn't a thug, but I wasn't gonna waste any time trying to explain that to someone who didn't wanna listen; if she wanted to hate me, I would hate her back and then some. I had to keep telling myself that. Deep down, I was really sorry about what I did to Allyson, (she probably wasn't) I didn't want to hurt her, but at the same time, I wasn't gonna back down to her. Anyway, Grant flew over to us, completely unaware of the ticking time bombs that were me and Allyson.

"Hey guys," he said. "Training hard I see. Uhh, two things. A: I kinda broke Allyson's robot into pieces, sorry about that Ally. B: It's 12:00 and i'm hungry, so let's go eat some food. Oh and Allyson? You should fix yourself up, your head's bleeding down the side of your face; It's in your hair too."

Allyson experimentally touched her forehead and looked on the verge of passing out when her fingertips came back red (then again, my head wasn't feeling so hot either). She looked at me murderously as she sung a few bars of "Wrecking Ball" over her fingertips and rubbed her head with her glowing fingers.

"I don't know what why you're looking at me like that," I said as we both got to our feet. "You were the one that decided to try and dislocate my shoulder, besides, you look good with red in your hair, it matches your inner psycho."

Her eyes flared dangerously, but she just turned and left the room, probably to go clean her face off.

"What the heck man?" Grant asked me. "Did I miss something? I thought you and her were hitting it off, what gives with all of this hostility."

"Not now Grant," I snapped at him as I fixed my throbbing head and body with electricity. "Let's just go get some food."

Grant and I went straight to the cafeteria after training; Allyson joined us 10 minutes later, the blood on her face wiped clean. For lunch I had a bacon cheeseburger with BBQ, some fries, a few slices of supreme pizza, and a soda that consisted of Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, and lime flavored Gatorade (if it's from a soda fountain, my drinks are always mixed). I didn't talk much between eating, just occasionally talking to Grant about Kung-Fu stuff. Other than that, Grant and Allyson were having a lovely conversation. Three trays later, and 30 minutes of feeling like the world's biggest third wheel, I excused myself and put my trays away. I wasn't mad at Grant, but I couldn't take the feeling of being left out while in a group; it was worse than being alone.

"Don't forget," I told Allyson on the way to the exit. "Spear lessons, you promised to teach me."

"I know my job," she snapped at me. "Don't worry, I won't disappoint."

I walked out of the cafeteria and headed to my room, where I crashed on my bed and flipped on my TV. For the next twenty five minutes, I watched an episode of Spongebob; good thing a classic episode was playing, not the new crap they come out with. After the episode was over, I checked the time: 12:53 PM. I quickly went to the bathroom and rushed down to the training room. When I got there, Nightcrawler and Grant were already getting started on sword training. Grant was holding a 5 foot long medieval looking blade, and looked like he was in the middle of learning parrying techniques; he wasn't half bad. I scanned the room for Allyson and found her in a far corner next to a long table stacked with weapons. I dashed over to her in Speed Mode, not wanting to waste any valuable training time.

"You're late," she said bluntly. "Leaders aren't supposed to be late."

"I had to use the bathroom, plus i'm only three minutes late, sue me."

"Three minutes or three hours, late is late!"

"Ok, ok fine, i'm sorry."

"Humph."

'Humph' was her new favorite word. Anyway, I got a better look at the weapons table. On it were a couple of knives, three swords, and two spears, (one was double bladed).

"I don't get it," I told Allyson. "What happened to spear training? What's up with the extra battle gear?"

"I wanna get warmed up." she said as she grabbed the two knives. "Plus I wanna see if you're really worth the trouble. I've seen you take down unarmed beasts, now let's see what you can do against someone with a brain."

"Fine," I said reaching for one of the swords.

"You won't be needing that," Allyson told me. "For this first part, you're unarmed."

"But you have knives, that's so not fair."

"My game, my rules, suck it up and fight."

I rolled my eyes and breathed off, but I set up a defensive stance, and got ready for battle.

Allyson rushed in and started swiping and stabbing at me from every direction. I kept my distance, bobbing and weaving her swipes, and side stepping her stabs. I had to hand it to her, she was fast and deadly, if I were any slower, i'd be skewered (in spirit, the training weapons were always dull). However, and this is both good and bad depending on your perspective of it, but this wasn't the first time someone's come at me with a knife (it was my third time to be exact); I knew how to handle myself. Allyson swept at my head, and when I ducked, she stabbed at me with her left knife. I barely managed to move out of the way, but she was already stabbing at my back with her right. I backflipped over her (I love doing that), and swept her legs out. I would've capitalized on that, but on the way down, Allyson made a wild stab at my chest, and I had to back away in order to stay safe. Unfortunately, Allyson didn't waste a second on the ground, and immediately got up. We both stared each other down for a few more seconds, trying to catch our breaths.

"You know you ARE allowed to fight back right?" she goaded me.

"Just worry about yourself girl," I responded. "I don't need any tips from a soon to be loser."

She charged me with a yell (man, I am way too good at getting under people's skin). I rushed her back and fainted a punch, causing her to falter a bit, although she quickly regained her footing and started stabbing at me again. I ducked at weaved around all of her strikes, waiting for a golden opportunity to move in and strike. She swept one of her knives at my chest, and when I ducked, she thrusted both of her knives down at my head. The Golden Opportunity. Quicker than she could have reacted, I grabbed her wrists, rushed to my feet and twisted her hands. She refused to let go of her knives, so I backflipped, kicking her under her chin, and launched her to the floor with a dropkick that I managed to squeeze in between the backflip and my landing. Once hitting the floor, I grabbed one of her knives and threw it at her head once she managed to get to a semi sitting position. She crashed back to the floor.

This time, I actually did, rush over to help her; I may have been angry with her, but I wasn't heartless. Luckily, her head wasn't bleeding or anything, and she managed to get to her feet.

"Not bad huh?" I asked while semi rubbing my win in her face.

"Whatever," she frowned at me. "You just got lucky is all, let's move on."

"You sure you don't wanna just quit while you're ahead?" I asked her. "Swords are kinda my thing now, I don't wanna embarrass you anymore than I have to."

Allyson glared at me.

"Just grab a blade and fight," she said. "We'll see who embarrasses who."

I grabbed one of the swords and twirled it around in my hands; Allyson did the same with the ones she had. We stared each other down again, but this time I went on the offensive first.

I feinted a horizontal slash but actually attacked her with a good thrust. She sidestepped it like a pro and slashed her blades at my back; I just barely managed to duck under the blades, avoid a few stabs and slashes, and get back to my feet, playing heavy defense as I blocked, and parried Allyson's dual sword strikes. Now I had already trained myself not to give away signs of what my attacks will be, so I know it wasn't my face that alerted her. But at the same time, that was a really fast stab, even without super speed. Eventually, after a lot of contemplating, I just accepted the fact, that after eleven years of Kung-Fu training, Allyson was just that good, and just that fast to be able to keep up with my, two day crammed sword training. To say that Allyson was good wouldn't do her justice, because in actuality, she was pretty damn formidable. She kept me on defense as I blocked and dodged her dual sword strikes. Occasionally, i'd manage to get inside her guard and make a desperate stab or sash attempt, but she would simply dodge or block my blade. I slashed at her multiple times, trying to find an open attack spot, but she was having none of it. After three minutes of back and forth swordplay, I downward slashed her, and when she caught my blade between her's in an X, I kicked her in the gut and resumed offense. I slashed at her back and forth, using feints, speed stabs, and generally anything I had in my swordplay knowledge. Still no luck. One time when I tried for another stab, Allyson slashed it away with her left blade, and somehow managed to reverse the grip of her sword and slash at my neck. I just managed to duck it, as well as avoid a downward stab. When I tried to get her with an upward vertical slash, she backed up while simultaneously spinning. With two blades that was really effective. The first blade, which was still pointed outward nearly got my head. On the come around, her second blade almost did me in as well, but I managed to block it just in time. Again, she tried to take me out by trying to lock my neck in an X sword lock, but I quickly ducked and swept my sword at her gut. She somehow managed to front flip over it, as well as myself, and I almost got slashed from above with her swords. When she landed on the other side of me, I put pressure on her, slashing stabbing, kicks, etc. Then in a stroke of brilliance I got an idea; a way for me to use the environment to my advantage. I kept pressure on her with no real intentions to finish her just yet. Suddenly, in a move that nearly took her head off, I swept my blade across her neck. When she ducked, like I predicted she would, I side flipped over her, (trying for a stab from above just in case) and when I landed, I played defense again. This time I LET Allyson push me back, although I did have to watch myself, she was still wicked good. I kept inching back, waiting for that signal to do the thing. Finally, I saw it, that gleam in her eyes that suggested she knew something I didn't, the feel of something looming behind me. I would only have one shot at this, if I messed it up, it was Game Over, but I risked it. As soon as I felt I was in range, and as soon as Allyson thrusted her swords at my chest, I lept into the air, balanced my feet against the wall behind me, and flipped over Allyson, slashing my blade against her back.

She looked so put off about her loss, which she really shouldn't have, she put up a great fight. Anyway, I decided to be sporting about it and I gave her a shot at redemption.

"First one to three?" I sportingly asked her.

She was wary at first, but she slowly smirked in defiance.

"You're on." she said.

On the second fight, Allyson and I went back and forth for five minutes before I managed to beat her again. I noticed that her strength was also her weakness during our fights. She had range at versatility on her side with dual wielding, but at the same time, she assumed because she had two swords, that meant that she had to worry less about guarding close. At the same time, she assumed that I was afraid to get in close; I wasn't. After five minutes of fighting, I managed to break Allyson's guard by rushing in and kneeing her in the gut. She backed up and desperately swept at me from the left, but her swing was too wide; nearly child's play to counter. I kicked her in the face Shawn Michaels style, sliced her arm and brought my blade in for a point winning slash to her neck.

"Damn!" she swore after losing the fight.

"Language little lady," I playfully scolded her.

"Never call me that!" she snapped at me.

"Ok, ok, just chill. Look for what it's worth the problem isn't your skill, you're simply leaving yourself open on the inside. Try and keep your guard closer to the inside, it'll make you a lot less vulnerable, and leave me with limited options for finishing."

I didn't think Allyson would listen to me, but you'd be surprised how well people listen after they've been humbled. She grabbed her blades again and set up for Round 3; I did the same.

This time, Allyson actually beat me. And yes, my advice helped her a lot. With her new change in tactics, she cut off a lot of opportunities I had for fatal blows. For example, when I tried for a stab to the gut, her sword, which was closer to her stomach, easily parried my blade and she kicked me hard in the chest, sending me staggering backwards. Because she kept her defense a lot tighter, she could really guard her upper and middle body really well. In fact, the only real options for offense that I actually had were at the legs, and even that wasn't very reliable. We went at it for three minutes before she tried taking my head off with a wide slash. At first I was like 'have you learned nothing woman?' But as it turns out, she had it all under control. The slash was wide, but by the time she had thrown it, her arm had quickly folded into itself. Yeah, another thing. Without my super speed (I had pretty much willed my Speed Sense to shut off for a while) Allyson was pretty fast, even with my reflexes. She quickly reversed the momentum of her swing, and nailed me in the nose with her elbow (this time she drew blood). While I was staggering backwards, I felt the impact of a dull blade against my neck; which meant Allyson had just decapitated me for the first time.

"You ok," she asked me after the fight was over, trying hard not to laugh at me.

"Yeah i'm fine," I said. "Just wish I brought some tissues or something, my nose is really gushing here."

This time she didn't hold back her laughter, but she did help me out. She held up her hand, whistled into it and it started to glow. She grabbed my nose, squeezed it and held it for a few seconds. Once she let go, my nose felt better (I just wiped the excess blood into my shirt).

"Better?" she asked me, still laughing at me.

"Lots," I responded. "Now come on, the game's still 2-1 in my favor."

Again, Allyson beat me, but this time she got a lot more creative. We went back and forth for 2 minutes. I pressed her hard with a flurry of slashes and stabs, determined to break her guard. In a way, I think she predicted that I would be hell bent on the destruction of her new and improved guard, and exploited that factor. For the whole fight, I was the dominate offensive. Occasionally she would swipe back at me, or try to take me down with some fancy dual swordsmanship, but for the most part, she kept that guard nice and tight. When she did go for a fatal move, it worked. Basically, she waited until I tried for a downwards slash (which I did see myself doing), and then rushed into it. She did her X sword grip on my arm and sliced it. Naturally, we decided to end the fight there. I was defenseless, plus I was probably bleeding out. So yeah, the score was 2-2 now.

So far, Allyson and I had been sparring for at least 30 minutes (just getting warmed up my butt). That meant that we had wasted a little over half of an hour that could have been spent spear training on useless sparring (well maybe not useless, I was getting a nice tutorial on how to handle dual wielders). For the sake of my training, I vowed to end this last fight as quickly as possible; preferably with me winning.

I twirled my blade through my hand, preparing for Allyson to attack, thinking of better ways to get through that defense of hers. After five seconds of intense staring, Allyson made the first offensive move, and slashed at me with a volley of slashes in every direction. This time, it seemed like she was intent on not giving me any room to breathe, think, or maneuver. In other words, she was trying to put pressure on me until I popped; for the most part, she was succeeding. I had to keep on the defensive, moving back, dodging and blocking her swords, and watching her feet as well. I say this because she was starting to incorporate kicks into her fighting style (they found their way to my face once or twice). She kept pressure on me with her swords for a few minutes. When she tried to kick we in the gut, I flipped over her, trying to slice her back again, but this time she was wise to that trick. She slid on her knees, and just managed to dodge the blade. When I landed she charged me again, resuming her relentless assault. We exchanged a lot of sword strikes, and then Allyson feinted a slash from the right, but followed through with a stab from the other. I gotta admit, she almost took me out with that one, but that wasn't even the worst of it. She spun around, extending her arms, and nearly took me out with a windmill slash followed by another slash and stab flurry. However, I had figured out her secret. It was so blatantly simple, I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. I waited until the right moment, blocking, dodging, and countering her strikes until she swung at me with a right slash that was just right for me to parry it, lock it in the hilt of my sword, and wrench it away from Allyson. She looked totally dumbfounded, I don't think she was ready to fight me without the use of her two swords. Nevertheless, she tried. She slashed at me once, but I simply sidestepped, and when she tried for a downward slash, I blocked the blade with mine, and quickly kicked her in the gut (man I did that a lot today). While she went staggering, I threw my blade, the way Nightcrawler showed me, at her chest. The blade made it's mark, and I had won the game.

It was clear on her face that Allyson wasn't happy that I won, but she congratulated me and even went so far as to give me a handshake.

"So," she said after catching her breath. "You ready to start with the spears?"

"Not really sure we have time," I said checking the time on my watch. "We'd only have about an hour to train."

"Yeah. So?"

"We'd have to be able to…...ohhhhh."

"Yeaaaaaah."

We grabbed the spears from off of the table, shifted into Speed Mode, and got to work.

First, Allyson was intent on me learning how to twirl my spear like a freaking flag guy in a parade. She taught me the (in her own words) "Skip n' Catch" routine. Basically, while I was twirling my spear, I would spin it, skip a catch on the first spin, and then actually catch it with the intended hand on the second come around. At first, it was difficult, but once I got into my rhythm, it was simple. She drilled me on this for 10 minutes in real time until I was able to spin my spear with the speed of a powered fan. After that, we did MORE SPINNING! Now that I had mastered the art of twirling the spear like a marching band baton, Allyson drilled me on learning how to spin and rotate the spear to either side of my body. At first, I thought it was gonna be just another tedious waste of time, but after a few hits to the head from my own spear, I quickly learned how to get the hang of the lesson. It was basically taking what I learned from the twirling, and slowly moving it left and right. I started it slow after those unfortunate knocks to the head (which Allyson laughed at), and once I managed to master it at half speed, I gradually moved it up until I could do it on full blast; and it only took 10 extra minutes. Guess what I had to do after that? Yup, that's right, more spinning.

This time though, it wasn't a waste of time to me. Allyson taught me how to do that thing where you spin the spear behind your back and keep it rotating around your body. I didn't even hit myself in the head. All I had to do was keep my center of focus, take it slow at first, and gradually raise my speed. The lesson was actually only about 7 minutes.

"Ok," I said after the spinning stuff was done. "I think i'm all set to try out for the marching band. Now how about we get to the rough stuff, like stabbing, slashing, and spear throwing please?"

"Cute," Allyson mocked. "The little baby wants to try out his wittle claws."

I let that one slide, although I did promise myself to whack her in the head with my spear later. Anyway, we did move on to the stabbing. For this drill, Allyson used her powers, and created floating targets for me to stab at. Whenever I stabbed one down, another one popped up in a random spot. Allyson said that this was to improve my speed and reflexes. After five minutes real time, I got frustrated. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't to bad at the drill, but after five minutes of stabbing at glowing targets, and still not getting any faster or better at it, I kinda threw a small tantrum and threw my spear to the ground.

"What's the deal Jason?!" Allyson yelled at me. "You pick that spear up and you get your electric ass back to training!"

"No!" I snapped at her. "This is stupid, i'm not getting any better at this, it's just making me frustrated, besides, IT'S POINTLESS!"

"IS THAT WHAT YOU ALWAYS SAY WHEN YOU SUCK AT SOMETHING?!" she bellowed back at me.

"NO, IT'S JUST….I mean I...UGHHHHH!"

"Well said! Reaaaaal articulate!"

"Well if it's so damn easy, let me see you do it!"

She picked up her spear and set up her stance.

"Do it then," she said.

I focused on creating a bullseye target right in front of Allyson. As soon as it materialized, Allyson stuck her spear through it. I made another one, this time in the upper right corner. She didn't even hesitate before stabbing it ruthlessly.

Ok, I admit it, i've words were food, there wouldn't been enough space in my body to eat the ones I just spit out. Over the next 30 seconds, I must have created at least 100 different targets, each of them in completely random but reachable places. I even created a chain of targets in the same place in an attempt to throw her off; it didn't work. She was definitely a pro with the spear. Every stab was impeccably placed; she didn't miss, falter, or hesitate before taking out her target. In other words, she made me look and feel like a total amatuer (which I technically was).

"Good enough for you, princess?" she taunted me after I immediately cut off the target chain. "Or do you wanna complain some more about my 'pointless' methods'?"

"Okay fine," I breathed off. "I admit it, your methods do bear some nice looking fruit; i'm sorry. It's just...it's not working for me. I know i'm just starting out but i'm not getting any better, I can't feel myself improving, and I know i'm not. So what is it? What am I doing wrong; how am I not getting this?"

Allyson chuckled, although this time, there was no sting or insult behind her laugh. This laugh (I know it because i've heard it too many times to count) was because I had finally asked the right question.

"You know Jason," she started. "For someone who's so smart, you sure are stupid.

"You're not helping, this isn't helping me," I responded.

"Well then maybe this bit of advice will. Stop forcing it. You're using your eyes to much, you don't need to scan for the target, use your peripheral vision. Also, you're holding yourself back from your stabs, you're afraid of missing. If you wanna get better, you have to be looser, that's what all of the spear twirling was for. Your hand eye coordination is spot on, you're simply holding yourself back; don't think you can, know you can."

"So you're saying….it's a mental thing?"

"In a nutshell, yes."

I took a deep breath.

"Alright then," I said. "I'll give it another go."

Ok i'll admit it, Allyson is a damn good teacher. She was right about me not needing to scan for the target; using my peripheral vision was so much more effective. Once I got past that barrier, hitting the targets became a bit easier. Plus she was right about it being a mental thing. My brain was holding me back, in the sense that it needed confirmation that I would hit the target. Fear+hesitation equaled slower reactions. It took a little while, but after I told my brain to shut up, and started reacting rather than thinking, I was just as good at impaling targets as Allyson. Allyson had me doing this for five minutes before combining it with another practice. It was the same concept, just slashing instead of stabbing. At first, the practice was simple enough, but I quickly learned that I was swinging way too hard; my momentum made it difficult for me to recover and reverse my strikes. After a few minutes of fumbling around like a caveman, I managed to slow myself down enough to find a balance between power and speed. The result was spear slashing harmony. Basically, when a target popped up, I swung at it with about 60% of my power. When another popped up, I twirled the spear until I slashed the point right through it. Eventually, I discovered there was no right or wrong way to the method. Sometimes it was as cut and dry as slashing. Other times I used my momentum to get from A to B. If anything else, my spear twirling was the most effective of the bunch; it was the perfect balance of speed and power, plus I could stop the twirling whenever I wanted to with a firm grip.

After target practice, Allyson and I checked our watches. RIght now the clock was at 2:30 PM. 30 more minutes before Grant and I switched places (from what I could see, he was getting pretty good)

"Still think we got time for more lessons?" I asked her.

"Oh yeah," she said nonchalantly. "We got loads of time, plus these next two lessons will be super easy."

"Why does that not make me feel any better?"

"Hush. Now let's go, I don't have time to waste."

"Yes ma'am, Sergeant Grace."

Allyson hefted her spear again and gave me one simple instruction: survive. Then she attacked me with no mercy whatsoever. She took her spear and slashed at me horizontally. I blocked it with the blade of my spear, but before I could feel any better about myself, Allyson shifted the weight of the spear and slashed at me with the other blade, nearly taking my head off. She grabbed her spear by the bottom half, and swung at me again like I was a baseball. I ducked, jumped when she went for a leg sweep, and somehow managed to deflect her spear when she tried to stab me in mid air. She pushed me like this for 5 minutes, slashing and stabbing at me. I gotta say, I was pretty proud of myself. No matter how many fancy moves or powerful swings she threw at me, none of them made a dent on me. Unfortunately, that was when I got carried away. I started to twirl my spear around my body, getting the momentum up and keeping it steady with my right hand. When Allyson slashed at me again, I grabbed my spear at the back, deflected hers away, and in the heat of the moment, I forgot that the objective was to DEFEND. After I deflected her spear, I roundhoused kicked her in the face, kicked her with my left foot with the leftover momentum, and thrusted my spear into her gut (again, dull spear. I did not draw blood).

Believe me, i've never tried to apologize so fast in my life."

"Oh my God!" I nearly shouted. "I'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, I got caught up in the moment, I didn't think, I-"

Allyson held up her hand in a gesture for me to shut up. She twirled her spear, set up an offensive stance, and smiled at me wickedly. I knew that smile too. She was so angry with me, her body couldn't process it. Instead, she was smiling; probably at the thought of wailing on me with that spear.

"I'm game." she simply said. "Let's play!"

She charged me with a huge 'YAAAAAH!" and started whacking at me.

News Flash: Allyson was holding back this whole time. When she actually put her mind to it, she was pretty much the bane of my existence in the arena. She stabbed at me fast and hard, I barely had time to defend or dodge. It's a good thing I mastered the art of not letting my brain shut me down, or else i'd have gotten some nasty whacks that I would've felt in the morning. She stabbed and slashed at me relentlessly, using her double edges to squeeze in a lot more combos. After a minute of blocking and dodging for my life, I managed to block one of her downward slashes, move her spear out of the way and kick her in the gut. I brought my spear down for a finishing slice, but she rolled out of the way and tried to sweep my legs with her spear. I jumped over it, and preemptively stabbed at her to keep her from doing the same to me. She managed to get to her feet, but by then I was already on the attack. I stabbed at her head once, and when that failed, I tried to hit her with the but of my spear in a surprise move. She simply ducked it, backflipped kicked me in the chin, and while I was staggering backwards, resumed her assault.

The fight was pretty one sided, due to the fact that Allyson was like some spear wielding goddess. She was so fast and deadly, each move she did either made me lose my balance or break my defense. We went back and forth for five minutes, stabbing, slashing, kicking, you name it. But after those five minutes were up, I got put out of my misery. I was getting tired, even in Speed Mode, eventually I would slow down, and Allyson would finish me off either way; so I made one last ditch effort, a final hail mary shot.

I managed to block a slash n' stab combo by Allyson, and force her backwards. Then I went all out. I started stabbing at her furiously, putting everything I had into being fast enough to make her stumble. It was working a little bit, but Allyson was cool under fire, she she always managed to deflect my spear point, and would've got the upper hand again many times if I didn't use the momentum and bring it around for a desperate baseball swing. After she blocked that, I stepped in, bringing the bulk of my spear towards me, and somehow I managed to use the butt of my spear to sweep Allyson's feet out from under her while up close. I wished I had a double edged spear like hers, I might've actually managed to finish her right there. As such, I had to rotate my spear so that the blade was facing the ground, but by then Allyson had more than enough time to roll out of the way before the blade came down. She quickly rolled to her feet, and when I rushed at her for a desperate stab, she placed her spear in the floor, used it as a weight source, and kicked me in hard in the chest, sending me tumbling into the ground; I didn't even have time to roll over before she planted her knees into my chest, and had a spear point pressed against my neck.

"Ugggghhhh," I groaned as she got off of me and helped me up.

"Well said," she taunted me, "You always this articulate?"

"Real funny," I said.

"Hey you started it, remember? I told you to SURVIVE, you were the one who decided to attack, you brought this on yourself."

"Oh yeah. Sorry about that by the way, I got caught up in the adrenaline. But thank you for the lessons and stuff. As long as I don't have to face you in the field, I should be good. Thanks."

I saw her smug and semi pissed off demeanor drop for a second, like the last thing she ever expected from me was a thank you. She looked like she was gonna say something, but Nightcrawler called me from across the room, it was time for Grant and I to switch stations.

"You better get going," she said.

"Yeah," I said, a little deflated. "Sure thing."

I ran over to the table and put my spear back, then grabbed my sword and jogged over to Nightcrawler.

"Watch out bro!" Grant called to me from across the room where he and Allyson were. "He's a handful."

"Thanks!" I called back, chuckling lightly. "Same to you buddy, she's a wild one!"

I turned back to Nightcrawler, who had just reappeared in a puff of smoke (how did I not notice him leave?). He was holding a silver shield with straps on the inside, the thing looked kinda heavy, but he was holding it as if it was light enough to be used as a frisbie.

"Time to play?" I asked him.

"Depends," he responded. "Are you ready?"

"You know it. I've been waiting all day for this."

He tossed me the shield, which WAS light enough to be used as a frisbee (seriously I could toss it the way Captain America does). Then he teleported to the other side of the room, grabbed a sword and shield from the weapons rack on the other side of the room, and teleported back to me. After getting ourselves properly suited up, Nightcrawler and I went to work.

First, we went over defense stuff. Nightcrawler slashed away at me, with my only instructions being to block every one of his attacks with only my shield. To be honest, it really wasn't that difficult. Nightcrawler hit me with a lot of fancy slashes, stabs, and strikes, occasionally throwing in a few feints or teleport slashes to keep me on my toes, but thanks to a half day of sharpening my reflexes and coordination, he didn't get through my silver circle of defense. Nightcrawler drilled me on this non-stop for 10 minutes straight, before having me do the same thing in reverse. For another 10 minutes, my job was to block and deflect all of his attacks, but this time, with my sword. On this exercise, I did pretty good, although there was definitely room for improvement. To be exact, my footwork; it was a bit clumsy and awkward. Out of the the five times Nightcrawler managed to tag me in the fight, three were in the leg, while the other two were from my sword arm.

"So what's the purpose of this?" I asked him respectfully. "I mean, why do I need to separate my sword and shield blocking techniques? I'm gonna have to use them both in battle, so what's the point?"

"Because," Nightcrawler started. "It's important for a swordsman, especially one who uses shields, to not become overly reliant on either his blade or shield. If you rely on the shield too much, you limit your maneuverability, and your opponent will find weak spots to exploit. Guard with your sword too much, and your opponent can do a number of things; Tire your arm out, use the weight of your shield against you, disarm you, anything. By using a balanced dynamic, your fighting will be a lot more versatile, you'll have more options for defense as well as offense."

"Oh,...well that's awesome. Please, let's keep going."

"As you wish mein friend."

For the next practice challenge, Nightcrawler got me introduced to switching up between sword and shield. What we did was a reaction game, Nightcrawler would strike at me with various types of strikes and such, but with every strike, he would either say 'sword' or 'shield'. Whatever word he said, that was the thing I had to block his strike with. To be fair, Nightcrawler didn't use any teleport moves; however, he did turn up the skill meter, and i'm not even embarrassed to say that he did manage to get through my defenses a good few times despite my best efforts. However, for the most part I did ok, i'd rate my performance at a 7.5 out of 10. Most of my success was due to the shield. While most would expect it to be heavy and in the way, this shield was lighter than air (seriously, it required zero body strength to lift). Also, I was just getting that good, sure it was only my second day of training, but like I said, I learn fast.

After the last practice challenge, Nightcrawler started teaching me the essentials of sword and shield combat. One of the basic rules was to keep my guard up, the shield was there for a reason. Another rule, strike fast and hard, but don't leave your defenses open too long. For me, that rule was a bit more flexible due to the fact that I could slash down 100 opponents in the blink of an eye, however for simple purposes it was pretty practical. Final rule that i'll mention, was to stare your opponent down like a hawk. With sword and shield combat, my opponent wouldn't be as susceptible to slashes and stabs to the body. In this type of combat, I had to take every hit that was available to me. Cuts to the legs were the most obvious, but Nightcrawler taught me how to wait for the right moment, and either dodge or parry my opponent's blade,and then slash off his arm. Other techniques he taught me were how to force my opponent's shield outwards, exposing his torso area, and of course, shield bashing and jumping stabs to the neck and face. We practiced these different techniques for an hour non stop; the guy wouldn't let me rest until he was 1000% sure I had them all down. Finally, after it seemed like my body would dissolve into sweat, Nightcrawler let me off the hook.

"Wait a minute," I said kind of confused that the training was over so soon. "That's it? That's all you have to teach me?"

"Correct mein friend," he said. "You are a natural, all you need now is to practice, and find your own way of fighting."

"But how am I supposed to do that if you don't teach me?"

"Style is not something I can teach you Jason, it comes from experience and personal training, I have taught you all you need to know to get started, and do not fret, I will be here for as long as you need my services, but the path you take must be your own, I can not hold your hand all of the time."

I totally got what he was saying. He had taught me all of the basics, and I had proven that I was proficient enough to go toe-to-toe with him, but I could definitely improve. The only thing was that I couldn't rely on him to teach me everything there was about swordplay, that would be up to me.

"Alright then," I said, accepting this realization. "Well, we have about thirty more minutes left of this training period, wanna spar till we run out of time? We can keep score, see who can rack up the most hits."

Nightcrawler smiled and nodded his head (I was starting to get used to it).

"You are on," he said while setting up his stance. "Let's see what you can do mein friend."

Sparring with Nightcrawler was so much fun. I could still sense that he was only using about 80% of his real skill, but that was more than enough to give me a decent challenge. In thirty minutes, we managed to squeeze in six fights. Nightcrawler trashed me in the first two rounds. His shield must have been as light as mine, because he was still jumping and flipping around like a circus performer. In the two times that he managed to beat me, it was because I had played too much defense. When he got into a slashing frenzy, I always hid behind my shield. Nightcrawler would either attack my legs or teleport slash and take me out at the back. After that, I got back in the game. On Round 3 after an intense battle, I managed to parry one of his slashes, knock his sword out of his hand using my shield, and then slashed his arm, figuratively taking it out. Nightcrawler won Round 4 by sweeping my legs and teleporting on top of my shield, pinning me to the floor and pressing the tip of his sword to my forehead. In summary, the score was 3-1 in his favor, and there was only 10 minutes of the training period left. If I hadn't let Nightcrawler get me with that last pinning move, I might've been able to make a play for a win, but with the small time frame I had to work with, the best I could hope for was a tie (hey, it's better than a loss).

In Round 5, I took the hurt to Nightcrawler. I realized that most of his wins came from me being overly defensive; I made a note to ditch that tactic. I rushed in and stabbed at the most exposed part of his chest. He easily sidestepped, but before he could take my arm, I quickly spun around and batted him away with my shield. For three minutes, we went back and forth in a pattern of slashing, stabbing, and blocking. My new aggressiveness kept Nightcrawler from attacking as often as he used to, but he was still no pushover when it came to defense. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but eventually I was able to get to him. I kept up the offense, pushing him back more and more. When I was certain that I could pull the move off, I tapped into a little of my speed reserves, and kicked his shield hard. While he was still flying backwards, I dashed after him, jumped over his shield arm, and hit him in the head with my sword. The score was 3-2 now, but I only had seven minutes to pull another win out of thin air; I had to make every second count.

The final round of our epic sword duel was as exciting and as challenging as any of the other ones. Maybe it was because he knew how little time was left, and wanted to make me earn this last victory, but in the last seven minutes of the training period, Nightcrawler turned up the heat to maximum; I was dealing with his 100% A-Game. To be honest, if I didn't tap into my Speed Mode powers, I would've lost the fight within the first 30 seconds. Nightcrawler decided that it was time to start cheating and use powers. I started slashing and stabbing at him as fast as I could at the start of the fight, while making sure to keep my guard up. Nightcrawler parried and dodged all of my strikes, sometimes counter attacking and putting me on defense. At full skill, even without his powers, he was WAY more than a handful. Within 10 seconds, he had already slashed at me 30 times. I managed to dodge, parry, and block all of his strikes, but i'd be lying if I said he didn't almost impale me in the chest, or take an arm off. Anyway, I managed to push him back a few feet by combining a shield bash with a power kick. When Nightcrawler landed, he swept his sword in midair, which made no sense until, he disappeared in a puff of smoke. Yeah...my Speed Sense lit up like a bonfire, in fact I could already feel the the blade making contact with my back. I managed to backflip over it, and turn my Speed Mode off (I wanted to fight for as long as I could without using my powers), then I resumed my attack. I slashed at Nightcrawler with a horizontal slash. When he batted it away with his shield, I ducked while spinning around, sweeping his legs out. He teleported away again, and this time, I saw him reappear in slow motion a few feet away from my forehead. In Speed Mode, I ducked under the slash, built up some power, and hit him as hard as I could in the face with my shield. He tumbled behind me, but quickly got back to his feet and attacked me again. We fought like animals for six minutes. At full blast, Nightcrawler was more than a match for me, but like always, I was a fast learner. I'm proud to say that I almost managed to peg him without the use of my powers. One time, after putting pressure on him for a full minute, I fainted a stab, followed through with a shield charge, and when he jumped over me, I managed to backflip, kick him in the butt (not intended), and then twist in midair . I was so close to slashing him in the back, but as my blade was coming down, Nightcrawler wrapped his tail around my arm and yanked it. I dropped the sword, and Nightcrawler also managed to twist in midair and go for a stab to my chest. I blocked it with my shield, and we both landed on the floor facing each other. Nightcrawler had already let go off my arm, but then again, he already had a sword and shield in hand; he had so many ways to beat me, while I was limited only to defense. Nightcrawler rushed at me again, with renewed vengeance and tenacity. He hit me with a slash, stab, shield bash combo, and then rinsed and repeated that for another minute. To be honest, I found a whole new level of respect for Captain America in that one minute. I mean seriously, how did he manage to stand up against so many villains with only a shield, and not get destroyed on a daily basis (yes I know the shield is indestructible, and Cap is like some sort of Super Soldier, but still)? Anyway, I blocked and dodged all of Nightcrawler's attacks, although he did get in some really dangerously close stabs and slashes at the head and legs. I tried many times to get to my sword, but Nightcrawler would always block my path and keep the pressure on me. Once we got down to the two minute mark, Nightcrawler started to really dig in deep, and let me tell you, it was not fun for me.

First, he started teleporting all over the place. He didn't hit me or attack or anything, he just kept teleporting around until I was surrounded by a ring or bluish purple smoke. Suddenly, my Speed Sense went off, and I just managed to turn around and block a flying stab from Nightcrawler. As soon as his blade made contact with my shield, he teleported away and attacked me from another angle. He did this for about ten seconds. Teleport slashing again and again until I was engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Nightcrawler tried slashing at me again, but even though I couldn't see him (or breathe properly), I managed to deflect his blade one more time, and run out of the smoke. Nightcrawler didn't give me any room to rest, he teleported directly in front of me and started hammering away at me with his shield. At first, I was confused as to why he didn't have his sword on him, but that question was quickly answered when he whipped his tail at my face, and I had to block the blade from taking me out. Nightcrawler pretty much danced circles around me, using his sword tail to keep me off balance, and occasionally grabbing it with his feet and almost kicking my head off. Finally I came to terms with the undeniable fact. If I wanted to win the fight, i'd have to use my speed; it was the only way. I blocked Nightcrawler's attacks for a few more seconds, and then surprised him with a shield bash that had the force of a high speed biker (I went into Speed Mode and went from zero to twenty in half a sec). While he went tumbling across the room, I made a mad dash for my sword, which was about 50 meters away from my current position. As I ran for it, I already saw a puff of smoke appear directly over it. Nightcrawler was trying to block my path. To bad he wasn't fast enough. I baseball slid (not a smart idea at 100 mph), grabbed the sword, and after I recovered from sliding halfway across the room, I dashed back to Nightcrawler and assaulted him for the last time. I was relentless with my attack, staying in Speed Mode and slashing him in every possible direction. I could've taken him out easily with my speed anytime I wanted to, but for now, I wanted to leave him with a small chance for a fight. I managed to trick him with a slashing feint, and almost took him down with a stab to the exposed part of his right chest, but he teleported away. This time, I would make that his undoing. I let him teleport until his whole body was tangible again, but I waited out of range of his strike. After he landed, I rushed in, and quicker than he could've reacted, I spun around, using my shield to scoop his out of the way, and on the come around, I slashed him in the chest and tied up the game with 3 seconds to spare. I celebrated my victory up until I saw Nightcrawler double over and start wheezing.

"That was an excellent fight Jason!" Nightcrawler exclaimed while trying to catch his breath (I may have forgotten to dial the final strike down a bit).

"Yeah for you," I said. "You were amazing. I mean that tail thing, and that teleport ambush, dude you were off the charts; I only managed to tie the score up because of my speed."

"Then why didn't you use that from the start?"

"Because I wanted to keep it fair. If I used my speed you wouldn't have a chance off pegging me even once. Plus I wanted to see how much of my own skill I could rely on. Sure, I know i'm a newbie, but I need to know that I can fight and win without my powers."

"Let me ask you a question Jason. When you and your friends fought against Venom in the Amazon, did he fight you without his powers?"

"No but-"

"And if you have the misfortune of facing off against future villains, do you think that they will fight you without using their powers?"

"Well, no I guess."

"Then why do you feel the need to hold your own powers back?"

"Well it's not like i'm gonna refuse to use my powers in the real deal for the sake of fairness, it's just that right here and now, I wanted to see how well I stacked up against a true swordsman, it's what i've always wanted to do."

"Well, while I am flattered by your respect of the art, I should inform you Jason that I used my powers quite frequently in that fight. If anything, I was the one who cheated."

"Not really, i'm faster, I can react and defend at a greater speed than anyone on this ship except for Quicksilver maybe. I can do a lot more with my speed than you can with your teleportation, no offense."

"None taken, in fact you have just spoken the magic words. You need not hold back your true potential for the sake of chivalry and sportsmanship, although the action is commendable on your part. The reason why I let you free from my tutelage is because i've taught you everything I can. Now, you must train and take your power and skill to a level that I cannot teach you. And please, if anything else, just remember the reason that you fight Jason; remember what you fight for."

"And what is that reason?"

"What do you think it is?"

I thought for a moment, shifting between the selfish and selfless reasons for why I decided to give being a hero, or at least a hero in training a shot.

"Honestly," I started. "At first I just wanted to get this all over with and go home, just a simple in and out. But after that fight with Venom, I kinda realized how much bigger this mission is than just me. I mean, that one stone gave Venom the power to blow up an entire state, if Doom or any of his other people get their hands on these stones, there's no telling what kind of destruction they can cause. So in a nutshell, I fight so that I can protect the world, so that I can protect my mom, so that I can protect my friends."

"Then may God watch over you and your friends on your quest mein friend," he said with a smile. "And know that I will always be available should you ever need me."

"Thanks Nightcrawler," I said with a lump in my chest. "Really thank you."

"Nightcrawler is my X-Man name Jason. My friends call me Kurt Wagner; last time I checked, you are a friend."

"Then thanks Kurt," I said as I reached out and shook his hand.

"Now go on, dinner has already started, your friends are waiting for you."

He disappeared in a puff of smoke, and I ran over to Grant and Allyson.

"What was that all about man?" Grant asked me. "You in trouble again or something?"

"Nah," I said. "Just a little mentor to student chat is all, no big deal. But enough of that, i'm starving, let's go eat more food."

I put my weapons away, and the three of us went down to dinner. I didn't feel like any burgers or fries again, but luckily they had this AMAZING japanese food buffet for dinner,and let me tell you something, there was nothing on this earth that could've kept me away from getting at least five trays of food. Conversation was a lot more lively at dinner than the previous meal. Allyson entertained us with tales of how exceptional she was at spear fighting compared to me and Grant. As it turned out, he wasn't that much better than me. He had a good basic foundation like I did, and he favored a more power swing fighting style compared to my scrappy speed driven fighting style, but overall Allyson deemed us battle ready, so long as we used lots of powers (and weren't fighting her).

"So how'd the sword lessons go?" I asked him. "Any improvement."

"Yeah," he said. "You were right, Nightcrawler's no softball coach, he kept me on my toes non-stop, but I did pretty good. I learned that i'm way better on defense than offense. Due to my bulkiness, it's better for me to defend, wait until my opponent slips up, and rush in with my strength to finish them. Also, as long as it's not Adamantium or Vibranium, or that Uru stuff, I can swing with enough force to break pretty much any metal weapon, so what I lack in offensive swordplay, I make up with power finishers. I'm gonna train some more and get my skill level up with the sword, but i'm still gonna stick with my trusty axe; who's to say the two can't co-exist?"

"Well good luck with that man, maybe we can use that sword and axe thing in the field."

Grant gave me a fist bump and went back to eating.

"So what about you Jason?" Allyson asked me. "How'd your sword and shield lessons go?"

I was honestly surprised. I could tell that Allyson and I were still on the rocks; and that sparring match where I almost choked her out did not improve matters in the slightest. Yet here she was, talking to me like it was normal. I decided to play it safe and answer politely. Who knows, maybe there was hope (though not exactly what for) after all.

"It went well," I started. "Nightcr-, I mean Kurt, drilled me on defense really hard. Basically, he taught me how to mix up defending with my sword and shield, and how not to get too reliant on one or the other. After that, we went over basic offense, and sparred for a good half an hour."

"How'd that go? DId you win?"

"I held my own. We played a point collecting game, and we tied it up three to three."

"Nothing wrong with a good ol' tie," Grant said. "At least you managed to put the heat on him, if I was any worse, it'd be like I wasn't fighting at all."

"Don't be so hard on yourself G," I told him. "You're still learning, give it time, eventually it'll all come together, you'll see."

"Thanks Jason. By the way, what was that whole mentor to student chat about?"

"Oh, basically, he told me that I had already learned everything I could from him, and that with my speed and electric powers, I could take sword fighting to a whole new level, and that it'd be up to me to go deeper into that. Also, we talked about the reason that I...you know participate in this whole teenage hero thing."

"And why is that?" Allyson asked me, suddenly really interested.

"Well for starters, I just wanted to go home, to be left alone. But after the whole Venom thing, I realized that this thing is so much bigger than just me. I fight on this team so that powerful weapons like that will stay out of the hands of people like Doom. In a nutshell, I fight to save the world, but more importantly, I fight to protect my friends. I know we don't know each other that well, but I feel like i've known you guys forever, and you may not need my protection, but if it ever comes down to it, I know i'd give my life to guys safe."

"Back at you bro." Grant sincerely said as he dapped me up.

Allyson didn't physically acknowledge my words, but the look in her eyes said it all, deep down, while she may not have come to peace with my more undesirable qualities, but she definitely saw some good in me.

After dinner was over (we stayed in the cafeteria the whole time), I gave Grant and Allyson the new game plan. I had already received confirmation from S.E.R.A. that our biometric analyses were complete at 7 A.M. After messing with my communicator, and figuring out how to enable the voice command, I managed to download S.E.R.A. into my watch, and instruct her to download our individual information into our watches.

"So here's how the last stretch of training will work for the day," I started. "In a nutshell, study your powers, see what you can improve, and spend as much time as you can doing so. S.E.R.A. knows how to make us better as individuals, and if we get better as individuals, then the team gets better as a whole, so no goofing off, but at the same time, know your limits; don't hurt yourselves."

"So we're training separately?" Grant asked me.

"Yeah, and before you argue about room space, i've already found two other rooms you and I can use for training; Allyson, you'll keep 135X."

She didn't seem upset about that.

"Ok, tomorrow, we work on team dynamics," I continued. "We'll see how well our powers work with each other, develop strategies, battle formations, ability combination, and basically whatever else we need to get better as a unit. Everyone clear on what they have to do?"

Grant and Allyson nodded.

"Ok then," I said getting up. "Let's hop to it."

We all exited the cafeteria, and made our way to our individual training rooms.

(Allyson's Perspective)

I went straight to room 135X, created a Sun Sofa in mid-air for no reason at all, and started pressing buttons on my watch once I got comfortable. I dunno if Grant or Jason have done this yet, but as soon as I got my watch, I pulled up the holographic instruction manual as soon as I figured out how to do it. This watch was simply amazing, I mean I had an iPhone 5s, but this watch could do anything that could and then some. I could access files from anywhere, surf the web, call anyone, even use a holographic version of Skype if I wanted to. Instead of doing that, I looked through my mailbox, and uploaded the file that Jason had sent to my watch. A loading screen flashed on the screen for a few seconds. After the download was completed, my watch flashed a bright blue and a huge projection beam popped into the air. After a few seconds, S.E.R.A.'s face popped up like a huge creepy digital tiki.

"Good afternoon Mistress Grace," she said. "How may I be of service?"

"Well first off," I said kinda grossed out that she called me 'Mistress'. "Don't call me mistress, i'm not a pornstar, Allyson is just fine, no miss or anything like that."

"As you wish Allyson."

"Ok cool. Now that we got that squashed, how about going over my biometric thingy or whatever?"

"Yes, your biometric analysis. I have divided my data into three categories: 1:Powers &amp; Current Status, 2:Power Development Capabilities, 3:Suggested Practices for Power Development. What category do you wish for me to review first Allyson?"

"Well, I already know a lot about my powers, but maybe I missed something. I can't have that, so let's go over category 1, after that just keep going in order."

"As you wish. "Your power derives from your mutant ability to absorb and harness and unlimited pool of solar energy in your cellular makeup. This energy has caused greater friction and reaction between your cells, allowing you to use 40% of your overall brain capacity."

"Is that why I have such a good memory and like super good coordination?"

"That is correct Allyson. Moving on, your ability to discharge and reshape solar energy is actually due to your increased brain wave activity. You have limited telepathy and telekinesis, which allows you to further extend and develop your powers."

"Hold on for a second S.E.R.A. I can understand the whole limited TK thing, that sorta makes sense, but what's with the telepathy? The only time i've ever been in someone's head was when I was wearing the suit."

"That ability presents itself in your ability to sing. It is a unique and unheard of form of telepathy, but when you sing, the solar rays in your body are transmuted into mental, but sometimes tangible energy that affects your body as well as others. For reference, when was the first time that you discovered your healing capabilities through song?"

I thought for a little while; it was such a long time since then.

"Last January," I finally said. "It was about a month after I had gotten my powers; I was just starting to get used to them, didn't even try flying yet. Anyway, my cat, Dina, was playing in my yard, but suddenly after a popping sound, she screamed loudly and her front right leg was bleeding. We didn't find out exactly who did it, but she was shot with some sort of bb gun pellet. I took her inside my house and sung to her to calm her down. Midway through the song, while my eyes were closed, I felt my body heat up, and Dina, who was meowing softly, had suddenly became silent. I opened my eyes, fearing she was really hurt, but when I looked at her leg, the hole was gone. Also, her fur was hot, like someone had taken a hair dryer to it. My parents couldn't believe what I did, but they were glad nonetheless; going to the vet would've cost a lot of money. After that, I healed my dad one day after he got home from work with a nasty gash on his arm. That was when I figured out that I glowed and caused other people to glow when I heal them. From then on out, I was like a medic for hire, not that I charged or anything. I just went where I was needed around town, healing injured people, occasionally saving lives, and stuff like that. Everyone who knew about me, liked my family, so we managed to keep my powers a secret for a long time until S.H.I.E.L.D showed up."

"Very insightful Allyson," S.E.R.A. responded. "To further elaborate, your healing ability is a manifestation of your solar energy being transferred to a host's body by sending mental waves through your lungs. The energy causes the host's body to regenerate cells at a much faster rate than normal, allowing for near instantaneous healing. Furthermore, your ability has the capability to alter brain wave activity, specifically in the areas that deal with emotion."

"Oh yeah," I responded. "I dunno why, but my songs can cheer up people who are mind-bendingly sad, or calm people down even if they're hellbent on fighting or destroying stuff. Why is that?"

"Through song, your telepathy affects brain emotion by causing it's natural electric pulse to broaden on a precise area. This effect can be done on a numerous scale and can evoke more than just happy or soothing emotions, though I doubt you'd ever resort to anything other."

"Nope,"

"Furthermore, your voice is effective in a unique form of mental shielding."

"Believe me, I know that firsthand."

"Finally, it would seem as though your ability has a suppressed power reserve that has not been accessed until early yesterday."

"Oh yeah?" I asked now suddenly interested. "Go on."

"It would seem as though your powers come with a hidden reserve of energy that has been highly concentrated, and increases the potency of your abilities by 1000%, making you nigh invincible, as well increasing the power of your energy blasts."

"Don't forget about lightspeed, I can do that now."

"Of course Allyson. Though it is not clear how or why this portion of your powers chose to present itself until recently, my theory is that your powers have actually been in effect since your birth, without them, you would've died due to being born 2 months prematurely."

I was gonna ask how she knew that, but then I remembered that she was tapped into every digital record in the world, she could probably pull up my transcripts. Even so, that wasn't something I liked to tell people, it was like a slap to the face hearing it from S.E.R.A.

"However," she continued. "Your ability to absorb solar energy kept you alive and healthy. The power level readings suggest that even with constant absorption, you would not have vast energy reserves if your powers were only active for a year."

"Makes sense," I said. "But why would my powers take so long to show themselves?"

"You were not strong enough to use them," S.E.R.A. said. "Your powers, though beneficial, expose you to gravity fields that would've crushed you in on yourself if you used you used them prematurely, especially if you used them to fly. You are largely immune to gravitational forces and extreme heat as of now; even without your powers active, you can survive with minimal discomfort in the core of the sun. It seems that you had to come of age before being able to have access to these abilities."

"Well that was an eye opener. Anything else?"

"Negative. If you wish, we can proceed to examining the developmental opportunities that come with your powers."

"Sure that sounds fun."

S.E.R.A.'s face morphed into a super large screen that had my body outline on it. On the side, a bunch of data that I didn't bother to read flashed upwards like end credits.

"For the most part Allyson," S.E.R.A said as her face reappeared in the top right corner of the screen. "Your abilities do not exactly need improvement, just honing in other ways than normal."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked her.

"Take your flight for example. You achieve that by using your absorbed energy to surround you in a body aura that allows you to move fast enough to defy gravity."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, the same principle can be used to run a super speeds on the ground Allyson. This will make you much less of a target, and will offer more maneuverability in certain ground level situations."

"Well, i'm not much for running, that's Jason's thing, but I guess I could give it a whirl."

"Also, your ability to control emotions through song can be further developed to the point to where you no longer need to sing, but can speak to alter the emotions of your targets."

"You mean, I can tell them to sleep or punch themselves in the face, and they'd have to do it?"

"Precisely Allyson."

"Cool, I can have some fun with that. Anything else?"

"Only the small pocket of energy that you now have access to. When you breached the shell, your energy reserve doubled in size. With proper conditioning, I can help you expand it 5x it's size, as well as instruct you in how to access and channel the energy without harming yourself, or others."

"Now that sounds like a plan. What do I have to do first?"

The room morphed, and when the transformation was complete, the room was filled with weird looking weights that looked bigger than even Grant could lift, a weird looking treadmill, some type device that looked like it was meant for crushing cars, and a huge hologram of a human brain.

"We have a lot of work to do Allyson," S.E.R.A. said. "Let's get started."

First, a really big metal sphere, about the size of a monster truck tire, descended from the ceiling, and hovered 10 feet in the air.

"Uhhh S.E.R.A?," I asked her. "What is that for?"

"It's an energy absorber and magnifier." she responded. "One of the major drawbacks of your powers is that without the constant absorption of natural solar energy, your powers are slightly weakened. This orb will absorb your solar energy blasts, and magnify them, creating a constant power source for you to draw from while you train."

"So, i'm basically creating an artificial sun with natural flavors?"

"Not the way I would classify it, but yes, that is essentially what you would be doing."

I focused on creating a mini sun around the floating ball, and held it for a minute until S.E.R.A. told me that I could stop. The metal ball, which was now glowing with a brilliant golden light, absorbed all of that energy like a sponge; and yes, it was almost like the real thing. Except for the size, and the fact that I could sense the difference between self-made and real sun rays, I almost couldn't tell the difference. Anyway, after I created my artificial sun, I went to work.

The first part of training wasn't very hard. S.E.R.A. had me get on the treadmill and work on my running speed. At first, it was kinda tricky, I wasn't used to using my Sun Form on the ground. After a few minutes though, after I commanded my body to get used to staying on the ground, I was able to run faster than a bullet could escape from a gun. Now i'll admit it, I wasn't AS fast as Jason or Grant. At my fastest I could only reach Mach 4, but that was only because I wasn't used to running, even without my powers I didn't do that too much. However, seeing as I was fast enough to run on water, scale up walls, and outrun jets, I didn't complain much. Heck, on my first time running I could go at four times the speed of sound. Just wait until I got used to running.

I ran on the treadmill for 10 minutes before S.E.R.A. switched up the drills on me. She changed the room again, and I found myself surrounded by walls lined with turrets.

"New objective," she said. "Avoid incoming projectiles."

Before I could yell at her for being 100% insane, all of the turrets went off, completely spraying the room with bullets.

Immediately, time slowed down. Not because of that so called "Speed Sense" that Jason has, but because I immediately shifted into Comet Speed. The bullets were going so slow, it was like they weren't moving at all, which would be helpful if I wasn't being sprayed with bullets from four different directions. If I did it the hard way, I could've created some melee constructs, cut a path though the bullets until I created a small pocket where I would be safe, but that would've taken a really long time. Relative to you it would only be one second, but to me, it would've been like 2 minutes. Instead, I put a Sun Barrier around myself, and waited for the bullet hail storm to stop. The barrage of bullets stopped after 3 seconds, which gave just enough time to yell like a spoiled celebrity at S.E.R.A. She dismissed my argument, saying that the bullets were non lethal, and that I did really well for my first speed test. Before I could question her about what that meant, the room changed again, becoming empty, and after a flash of light, I was surrounded by hundreds of armed robots.

"New objective," S.E.R.A. said. "Defeat enemies using only super speed melee."

The robots opened fire on me as soon as she finished talking, and I had no choice but to go along with this crazy train. I created two Sun Swords, and went straight to business. As far as I could see, I was surrounded in a rough rectangle of robots. Not exactly the most stellar place to start from, but I had to start somewhere. I took off, taking care to avoid the lasers, and started cutting my way through the ambush. I wish I could say I had a plan of attack, but honestly, I was just running and cutting. At this point, I was already used to running at super speed, but fighting in it, was a little bit tricky. For me, it was like trying to swing at someone from a moving car, not hard, but not easy. Take that with the fact that I was simultaneously trying to avoid being shot with high pressure laser guns, and you can probably put together a picture of me struggling to keep my head above water. After a while, which was like 2 seconds in real time, I managed to get the hang of speed slashing, and finish off the robot pack with ease. Part of my success was me figuring out how to gauge and control my strikes while running. If I swung too hard, I would trip up from my own momentum. That nearly earned me a laser to the face a good few times, so I made it a new goal not to do that anymore. Another thing that helped me out a lot was my artificial sun. I never realized this before, but when natural light was touching anything, even when I wasn't looking at it, I could always sense where it was. That was how I managed to keep my bearings while avoiding the lasers, and making down the robots, my artificial sun was lighting the way for me. And yes, pun intended. After a wave of light, swept away the wreckage of the defeated robots, another flash of light illuminated the room, and this time, a single robot, one that was leaner and more agile looking, was left in place. At first I was kinda insulted, but I realized that, like everything i've been exposed to in the last few days, there was probably more than what met the eye to this robot. Pun not intended this time.

"New objective," S.E.R.A said. "Defeat the speed droid."

The robot charged me at like 100 mph and I simply stood and waited. You'd probably think that I would counter charge it or something, but their was no need. I waited until it was only a few feet away from me, and willed myself to get faster. The robot, who was previously coming at me at the speed of a cannon, was now only traveling at about 5 mph from my perception. The robot swung at me with a right fist, and after I caught it, I flipped it over my back, created a spiked boot construct over my foot, and smashed it's head like an egg. Forget running up walls and crap like that; I was gonna make speed fighting adapt to fit me, not the other way around. Another flash of light swept away the trashed speed droid, and spawned four more in it's place. This could be a bit of a problem.

"New objective," S.E.R.A. said, which was starting to get old. "Defeat the speed droids."

This time, when they charged at me, I did the smart thing and took off in the other direction.

Don't get me wrong, I already knew that I could've simply created a Mega Sun Sword and sliced the speed droids in half, but that would be too easy. Not that I was gonna become a super speed buff like Jason or Grant, but I would at least give this whole running combat thing a try before I immediately dispatched the droids. Anyway, it wasn't like I was any good at it. The first time a droid caught up to me, I swung at it with a hard right. It simply dodged my fist, and stuck it's foot out, tripping me up. I would've skipped over the floor like a stone over water, but I caught myself in mid-air, and put a barrier around myself to keep the droids out. They bounced off of my barrier like flies off of a windshield, and gave me some time to think. A: I realized was no good at running and punching like Grant and Jason. B:Odds are that it would take a training session or two with them or Quicksilver to actually build up some basic skill for this stuff. C: I was never going to be my own person as a hero if I was going to just copy other people. Sure, it never hurts to improve personal skill and develop new tactics for battle, but at the end of the day, I had my own way of doing things, and they worked out just fine. In a nutshell, while I was under that barrier, I remembered that I had to fight the way Sunbird does, not the way Super-G or Thunder Man did.

I put the barrier down and waited for the speed droids to get up and attack me again. They charged me from four different directions, but with the area being illuminated with light, they may as well have been coming at me in a straight line. Before they could even get within ten feet of me, I willed the light in front of them to harden into spiked wall constructs. They were going way too fast to stop, I doubt even Jason's Speed Sense could have saved him from being impaled. After they crashed into the spiked walls, I created four more, and crushed each of them like a car in a junkyard for good measure. This time, when the flash of light swept them away, the room changed back to the point where it had a bunch of weights and that brain hologram in it. Not that I was tired or anything, because I was still absorbing the artificial sunlight like a sponge, but I was glad that my speed trials were over now.

S.E.R.A. directed me towards the jumbo sized brain hologram, and I followed suit. She said that I could telepathically alter people's emotions through my song; and while that had it's ups, S.E.R.A. wanted me to use my songs to instill things like sadness and anger in people. I had no desire to do that to anyone, and I made myself a promise that no matter what, I would never sing if it meant crushing another person's spirit.

"Ok, so what do you want me to do with this one S.E.R.A?" I asked her. "Sing to it."

"Precisely," she responded. "Use whatever vocal skills necessary, and invoke the requested emotion on the virtual brain when I give the command."

"And how am I supposed to know when it's working?"

The brain suddenly flashed with a yellow light.

"That was happiness," S.E.R.A. said.

The brain flashed again with: black, blue, purple, pink, red, and green.

"Sadness, Hope, Lust, Love, Anger, Envy," S.E.R.A. said. "The hologram is attuned to all kinds of telepathic frequencies, even ones as unique as your's, as long as you perform your action properly, the brain should react to your telepathy."

"How," I asked her. "It's virtual, how can it hear me."

"Sensory technology lining the walls, the same way I can hear you."

"Oh right sorry,"

"No apologies necessary, just prepare for telepathy drills."

I did a few do re mi's, and waited for S.E.R.A's signal.

"First objective," she said after a few seconds. "Instigate happiness."

That was way too easy. By the way, for fair warning, most of my song playlists consist of Disney movie songs, and cheesy pop songs from 1999-2013 and a few GLEE covers. What? Eye of the beholder, don't judge me.

Anyway, for the happiness test, I sung the chorus of "Party in the U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus, you know, before she went insane. Almost immediately, the brain flashed bright yellow. By the way, if you wanna know how how my so called 'telepathy worked, it was pretty much like sharing. When I sang my songs, it was like I had something to give the other person, something I wanted to share with them. This'll sound really stupid, but my telepathy was like a mental UPS guy, and when the package was delivered to the brain, it exploded and resonated throughout the host's body. Again, really stupid but it's all I could think of. So yeah, I passed the happy test with flying colors; man I gotta stop with the puns.

"Next objective," S.E.R.A. said after I stopped with the singing. "Instigate sadness,"

I hated doing this, but I definitely had a handful of sadness that I could express in song. I sung the first few verses of 'Don't Forget', by Demi Lovato. And for reference, the inspiration was from a recent break-up. The brain glowed black, like a bottle of ink spilled on top of it. With each emotion, S.E.R.A. had me hold the songs for thirty seconds before she let me cut the track; by the time this one ended, I had tears streaming down my face like a waterfall, and my heart felt like someone had stuck pliers in at at stretched it apart like taffy. Yeah, it was a REALLY bad break-up.

The next objective was to instigate hope. It was asking for a bit much so soon after the last request, but I managed to pull myself together and deliver the goods. I sung, 'Seasons Of Love', which I didn't even know was a song until I heard it on GLEE. To be honest, this song was a lot more than one single memory. In the thirty seconds that I sung, I was sharing the times when my mom and dad comforted me for weeks after I got dumped, when my dad and I pulled together to help comfort mom when grandma died, and especially when my parents kept promising me how things would be alright, even when they found out I was a mutant. Roll all of that into one, and you get a virtual brain that was as blue as the sky.

For lust and love, the lines got a little blurred. Mainly, I had to differentiate the border between liking someone for their body, and liking them for their heart. Back where I was from, a lot of guys were lining up to get a turn with me, but I could tell most of them only wanted to get inside my pants, and the other half couldn't see past there over pumped egos. Don't get me wrong, i've been with a few diamonds in the rough over the years, but they were always way too clingy, and I had to break up with them for their own good; of course they never saw it that way. The point is, i've never really felt true love. I've felt more than my fare share of lust, so there was no problem there. To instigate that, I sung thirty seconds of 'Lovers &amp; Friends' by Usher. It didn't take too long for the brain to light up bright purple; what can I say, i'm that hot. For love...well since i've never really felt it, when I sung, my song was relaying longingness for love. If this brain was an actual person, I was basically begging it to love me, not lust for me, but genuine love. For that, I sung "All Over Again," by Big Time Rush. It took a little longer than lust, but I managed to make the brain light up bright pink.

Finally for Anger and Envy, I got a little bit creative. Anger wasn't something that came too easily to me, even when in combat, unless you pushed me too far. I thought on it for a little while, but after I had run out of options, I decided to sing "Time of Dying" by Three Days Grace. It wasn't overly effective, but it got the job done. For envy, I got a little vindictive. Like I said, i'm hot. It's not liked a bragged on this, in fact, I tried to downplay it as much as I could, but I still noticed how other guys look at me when i'm taken, how they long to be with me rather than their shallow, uptight girlfriends. I conformed to one of the biggest cliches in the universe, but for this song, I sung the chorus of 'Don't Cha', by the Pussycat Dolls. Again, it was all I could think of at the time.

After I had finished with the first run, S.E.R.A. took me through another run of the emotional spectrum, except this time, I only could hum or harmonize. To be honest, it wasn't to hard. For happiness, sadness, and hope, I just hummed a rough version of the songs I sung for each emotion. Love, lust, anger, and envy were the same. The only hard thing was figuring out to hum songs that didn't have a natural vibe to it, like 'Don't Cha', and 'Time of Dying'. Going through the hums only took about 5 painless minutes; the real work was yet to come.

So remember how S.E.R.A. said that I could sing words and my target would have to do it? Well we tried that out for an hour straight, with little results. Maybe my telepathy was only advanced enough to affect emotions, or maybe I just couldn't hack the whole mind control business, but after an hour of constant practice, the only command I could get the brain to follow was 'sleep'. Anything other than that, I couldn't do. I didn't get overly frustrated about that, mind control wasn't something I wanted to master anyway; the temptation to use it would be too much. Besides, if worst came to worse, I could just sonic scream and bust some eardrums.

The last part of my individual training was both mentally and physically exhausting. S.E.R.A. was going to try and walk me through getting control of my…..i'll call them Super Sunbird Powers. The only problem was that I didn't know how to access them, even when I did it the first time, I had no idea how I did it, I just wanted to be faster, and suddenly I was too fast. Besides, the last time I went Super Sunbird, it drained me on the inside, probably my organs or something. I wasn't going to die, I could feel that much, but if something like that happened on another mission, and Grant or Jason wasn't around or in time to save me, what would happen then? Anyway, S.E.R.A. brought up the DNA screen thing, and gave me the rundown on the way she thought my Super Sunbird Powers worked.

"From what I have been able to figure out from your biometric scans," she started after I got comfortable on another Sun Sofa. "You're advanced solar powers-"

"Call it Super Sunbird please," I interrupted her. "It sounds better, plus now I have something to rub in Grant's face. He thinks he's the big guy when it comes to cool code names."

Thankfully, it didn't seem that scolding or sarcasm was a part of S.E.R.A.'s programming, because she just continued on without batting an eye.

"As you wish Alyson," she said before continuing her info session. "Your Super Sunbird Powers seem to be activated by extreme adrenaline surges. Though you cannot expose yourself to life threatening situations every time you need to access Super Sunbird, I believe there is a way for you to reach that level without the need for a supervillain to be present."

"And how would I do that?" I asked her.

The image of my DNA scan transformed until it was just my full body scan. In the center of my chest was some type of ball of fire, like a mini sun lodged in my chest.

"Simply put," she said. Your Super Sunbird Powers are powered by an extremely concentrated, but deeply buried collection of solar energy. Though deeply buried, your body's self-awareness should be able to detect, and with the proper amount of force, release the energy, resulting in the activation of your Super Sunbird."

That plan didn't sound too bad. Unbelievably, and probably unrealistically simple, but at least something that could be achieved. There was only one problem with this.

"What about the after effects?" I asked S.E.R.A. "In case you didn't pick it up on your scanners, I get the biggest power failure after I drop out of Super Sunbird. I dunno why it happens, maybe it's because my Super Sunbird powers have a low battery life, but after I drop out of it, I can barely stay conscious; how am I supposed to use that in battle, without risking myself or my teammates?"

"The problem is not your 'battery life' Allyson. Your Super Sunbird powers can be recharged by extracting a small dosage of power from your main reserves, and concentrating it until it becomes Super Sunbird fuel. The problem is your hyper sense. When you access your Super Sunbird Powers, your brain, heart, organs, and nervous system, function at 1000 times than normal. Your body adapts to the sudden change while you are still in Super Sunbird, and adjusts your body so that you will be able to survive the sudden drop in power; otherwise, you would have died of shock. However, your body still needs a bit of a warning before decelerating from Super Sunbird, and your muscles and organs can still improve to be better suited to withstand the drop in energy. That is where your singing will come into play. You see, your songs have the ability to heal injuries, but it can also be used to strengthen bone, tissue, your organs, even your nervous system. After we figure out how to access your Super Sunbird Powers, for your own safety, you will need to sing constantly and focus on strengthening your body, as well as increasing your power limit in Sunbird Supreme; the longer you maintain that form, the bigger the energy reserve grows. After the training is over, you can decelerate out of Super Sunbird, but I still encourage you to keep singing while you decelerate, for safety reasons. Do you understand, or have any questions about my proposed course of action?"

"Too many to list." I said. "If if you think it's safe, i'll give it a whirl, but at the first sign of trouble i'm pulling back."

"Understood, let's get started."

First, I figured out how to go Super Sunbird. S.E.R.A. was right when she said that the power was hidden beneath the surface. I stood up, closed my eyes, and focused on diving within myself. I felt around through my all of the power I had in my body, which was like an endless ocean of fire and light. I took a minute, but eventually I was able to find the Super Sunbird energy. To describe it, Super Sunbird was like the heart of my powers. Literally, when I managed to find the power, it was like pulling on a string until you managed to find the root. In my terms, I just followed the base level power until I got deep enough to find the source. I felt waves of energy coming of of the Core, i'll call it that. Like the sun, it was giving off intense energy, and the farther it got away from the center, the less powerful and potent it became. In other words, my base level powers came from the sun itself. But it seemed like the energy was filtered inside of my Core first, and then distributed to the rest of my energy reserves. Good to know. Anyway, once I found the core, I focused on unleashing the power. I didn't know how to do that at first, but I could feel that the Core was just concentrated swirling energy; so I focused on accelerating my heartbeat, getting my adrenaline up, and making that energy swirl faster. It was starting to work, or at least making the energy swirl was. The power felt exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, like that feeling you get when you're on a rollercoaster. The power kept building and building for 10 seconds straight, until it felt like I was carrying an atomic bomb in my chest, which I kinda was. Finally, when it felt like my chest was gonna explode, I let the power consume me, and screamed out in a sensation that was the perfect mix of maximum pleasure and pain.

After the feeling subsided, I took a quick look at my body. Sure enough, I was a glowing transparent Super Sunbird. I immediately started singing 'Firework' by Katy Perry, which felt appropriate at the time. My voice was different in Super Sunbird; more powerful, mature, heavenly even. I also felt the familiar power sensation again. Yep, the power to lift 300 tons, blast an entire city to bits, and fly around the world in a second was back in my control. The only problem was that I didn't know what to do now. S.E.R.A. was operating to slow for me to talk to now. I was about to call it off right then, but S.E.R.A's face suddenly unfroze and started talking again.

"Don't stop singing Allyson," she said quickly, probably knowing I was confused as heck. "Even now your Super Sunbird power storage is increasing. Keep it up, but head over to the weights section on your left. It's time to increase the strength of this form as well."

I did as she said and flew over to the weights. To be short, the weights weren't exactly normal. The way S.E.R.A. explained it to me, they were Vibranium cylinders that held an unlimited amount of gravitons. The more gravitons, the more it weighted; hey, at least I wouldn't have to waste time putting 300 tons of weights on it. Anyway, I got under one of the barbells, and S.E.R.A. set it for 100 tons. I started lifting, kinda unsure about whether or not I could do it, but sure enough, the barbell went up, down, and back up again easily. How did it feel to lift 100 tons you may ask? Well, to be honest, I don't know, I couldn't really feel anything. It's the same way that I was able to keep singing 'Eye of the Tiger,' while lifting more weight than a school bus. For some reason, I didn't need to breathe, and no matter what, I didn't seem to feel fatigue. I was still careful not to lose focus, but for now, it didn't seem like I was getting any kind of special workout or anything. After five minutes of lifting, S.E.R.A. seemed to pick up on that too, because she cranked up the weight to 200 tons. I still couldn't feel anything, and kept going on for another five minutes, still singing away like a bird in spring time. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, S.E.R.A. cranked up the weight to 300 tons. Now I could feel it! I can't really describe how it felt, because let's be real, how many of you can lift 300 tons? But let's just say it gave me the workout I was waiting for. Ironically enough, the only place that I felt slight feeling in, was in my arms. I was still able to sing, lift, and generally not get tired, but it was just like my arms had finally realized that they were lifting something extremely heavy. Still, I managed to keep up the effort for what felt like 10 minutes to me; I was moving at lightspeed, so it was probably like a second in real time. During that time, my body pretty much got adjusted to the weight. Seriously, it was like instant results. One minute, it's really heavy, 7 minutes later, it's not heavy anymore; it was cheating yeah, but i'm a mutant, my life is basically cheating.

After I got used to the weight, S.E.R.A. cranked up the weight to 350 tons. My arms felt the sensation of being overwhelmed again, but I kept lifting. This time, it only took about 4 minutes to get used to the weight, which gave me enough time to sing 'A Whole New World'. S.E.R.A. kept me on the same pattern for 200 more tons. Every time I got used to a bump in the weight, she'd crank it up by another 50 tons, and so on. Finally, when I reached 500 tons. S.E.R.A. dismissed me from the weights, and directed me towards the car compactor thing. I was not overly enthusiastic about that, trust me. After I got into position S.E.R.A. set the compactor for 500 tons, and let the thing drop on me. I didn't expect the thing to drop so fast, but apparently S.E.R.A. could make it move at lightspeed. As was such, I just barely managed to stop it with my arms, although the weight did force me to my knees. I held the weight for 10 minutes before I was able to stand up again, but S.E.R.A. turned it up by another 100 tons. She kept me on this path for another cycle, until I was able to effortlessly support 1000 tons. After that, S.E.R.A. let me off the hook for one day; now I had to figure out how to come down off of my high.

"Focus on slowing your heartbeat Allyson," she advised me. "Sing a song that calms you down, and focus on recapping your unleashed power."

I wanted to scream at her that it was easier said than done, but that wouldn't get me anywhere. I closed my eyes and focused. I could feel my heartbeat pounding away like a jackhammer. I took deep breaths, or something like that, again, I didn't need to, nor could I breathe while in Super Sunbird. I sang 'Breakaway,' by Kelly Clarkson, to help me settle down, and once I got to the chorus, I was already back to normal. It was still a little disorienting coming down from Super Sunbird, but the dizziness passed in a few seconds. S.E.R.A. insisted on scanning me for anomalies or something like that, but I didn't complain. After the scan was completed, she gave me her diagnosis.

"It would seem as though your bone and tissue density have tripled as a result of your training." she said. "You can survive a fall from over 1000 feet, survive a direct collision from a bus, and you are now strong enough to lift one ton without the use of your powers."

"Whoa," I managed to get out. "Well that's...awesome!"

I went back to the weights section to test out that whole 'lifting 1,000 pounds without my powers' thing; and while I couldn't do it as effortlessly as I could while in Super Sunbird, the barbell still went up. I was so excited about my new strength, that I flew around the room twice before landing and checking my watch. It was only 9:30 P.M., if you didn't know me better you'd think I didn't train at all. Still, I was stoked that I had so much time before bed, and yes I have a self-appointed bedtime. I rushed up to my room, showered quickly, slipped into my pajamas, and flipped the TV to Teennick. After four episodes of Drake &amp; Josh, I turned it off at 12 A.M., said my prayers, and climbed into bed. As soon as my face hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

(Grant's Perspective)

What's up you guys? It's ya boy Grant with another story of awesomeness to blow your minds. So after dinner, I made my way to room 193X. In all honesty, except for the missing walls of weapons, plus the fact that this room was twice the size of 135X, I couldn't really see any real difference; if anything, I kinda liked it more. After fumbling around with my morpher, and lots of swearing, I finally managed to download S.E.R.A., and project her face on one of the walls. I hovered in the air and reclined on nothing as I started my training session.

"Good afternoon Master Grant," she said. "How may I be of service?"

I love it when she calls me 'Master Grant", I dunno why, it just gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside, ya know? I was tempted to change that to 'Master of all things awesome' or 'Supreme being of coolness', but considering the fact that I had to work with teammates, I let my fantasies take a back seat.

"My physical if you will S.E.R.A.," I told her. "Tell me how awesome my powers are, and tell me how much more awesome they can get please."

"As you wish Master Grant. I have arranged the biometric analysis into three categories: &amp; Current Status, Development Capabilities, Practices for Power Development. In what order would you like to view these categories?"

"Take it from the top please S.E.R.A."

"Affirmative. From what i've been able to gather from your biometric scan, your mutant ability of enhanced strength, stamina, speed, flight, and durability,-while mostly coming from your own X-Gene- is powered by an unknown, but incredible source of energy."

"Any clues on what that energy source could be?"

"It could be anything Master Grant, I am still running tests, but I do know that the energy source is untouched by you, and until or if you learn to channel it, your abilities will only be 40% out of 100."

"But I don't know how to use this 'energy source', I don't even have power blast abilities or anything like that; having a full tank of gas that I can't use is totally unfair."

"Again Master Grant, I am still running tests so that I can deduce the true nature of this energy source and how it connects to you, I shall notify you of any and all advancements in my research."

"Ok then that's cool, but hey, i'm already powerful as it is, let's see what I can do without some energy source."

"Well, your powers of flight come from your ability to manipulate gravitons and make yourself lighter than them. This ability also makes you resistant to high levels of gravity, in your current state, you can survive at 5x the earth's gravity with intermediate discomfort; however, if exposed to high level training with gravity fields, you will be able to endure more than that. Your strength, speed, and durability function due to enhanced cellular interaction, and based off of your biometric scan, your cells have been dramatically altered to interact even faster than before."

"You can blame that on Jason the bolt boy himself, the guy super charged me with 100,000 volts of electricity."

"It would seem as though he did you a favor Master Grant. Because of that jolt in your cells, your speed capabilities were greatly increased. On the ground, you are capable of moving at ten times the speed of sound. In the air, and after being properly trained, your speed can reach half the speed of light under optimal conditions. However, your most valuable ability is your metabolism and regeneration abilities. Based off of your scans, it seems as though your body has a unique healing factor. After being exposed to harsh conditions such as extreme heat or pressure, your body will adapt so that it will become highly immune to whatever it was exposed to. This ability is an enhanced trait of your invulnerability to most metals."

"Oh yeah, about that. How come Vibranium and Adamantium can cut me, while nothing else can?"

"It is an anomaly in your abilities, even after cross referencing them with the abilities of heroes such as Luke Cage, I am still unable to ascertain the reason for this blip in your invulnerability; rest assured I am still running tests and will notify you of any and all advancements n my research."

"That's cool, take your time, no rush, just keep going with the ability stuff."

"Yes Master Grant. Your ability of adaption is also relevant to your strength. After exposure to lifting extremely heavy objects, and exerting your muscles past their limits, your body not only quickly recovers, but enhances your strength accordingly. With proper training and conditioning, it is uncertain about the exact limits of how strong you can become."

"Limitless strength! Just what I wanted to hear! Anything else for me doc?"

"As far as your current abilities, no. Are you ready to move on to the second category?"

"Sure am!"

"Then let's proceed."

The room changed the way it does when i'm about to engage in activities that are gonna be painful for me in some way or another. On the floor, in every corner of room, were some kind of weird techy looking vases that looked like they were gonna spawn robots or something. In the air, three big techy gymnast looking rings as that looked big enough to shove a rhino through, hovered in the air and stayed there. In the far left side of the room sat a bunch of really weird looking weights; I imagine even I would have trouble lifting them. Finally, on the far right side of the room, next to one of the tech vases sat an advanced looking treadmill, and just safely out of reach was a looming trash compactor looking device. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, on the opposite side of the wall were straps made of titanium looking metal, that wouldn't have worried me, if it wasn't for the fact that at the opposite end, rectangular holes were etched into the facing wall. I put two and two together, and came to the conclusion I really was in for a little pain train. Oh yeah, it was gonna be some serious workout time for ya boy right here.

"First," S.E.R.A. said as she materialized on the wall again. "You'll work on your speed. The treadmill is designed to be able to cope with speeds up to Mach 150, which is approximately 115,500 mph. Today, you will only be required to run at Mach 30, and after that you will be allowed a 5 minute respite, and will engage in gravity field training. The devices you see in the four corners of the room are gravity augmenters. At maximum, they can emit enough energy to create a gravity field half that of Jupiter; it is uncertain whether or not I will permit you to train in such brutal circumstances.

"Yeah," I said. "Because i'd haaate, to do anything life-threateningly dangerous."

"I can detect sarcasm just fine Master Grant," she said. "Moving on, you will be allowed 5 minute respite, and then will be subjected to the torture rack."

"Ok now i'm kinda scared," I said.

"Do not be," S.E.R.A. responded. "It is nothing of great consequence. After restraining you to the Titanium reinforced bands, I will subject your body to optimal, but not fatal burst of kinetic and energy attacks. The trials will strengthen your body, and render you more durable and battle efficient than before."

"Ok," I said. "When you put it that way, I guess I can trust you."

"Thank you Master Grant. The rest of your training will focus on your strength and flight speed. The weights you see over to your left harness and amplify gravitons, making them able to substantially heavy or light, depending on their setting. At your current strength, you are able to lift 5,000 tons on your own, without the use of flight momentum to aid you. Using the training gear, I can help you be as strong as you want to be."

"100,000 tons," I blurted out. "I know that's a lot, but I want to be able to lift that much before I finish training."

"100,000 tons it is," S.E.R.A. immediately responded. "However, I believe it will be more efficient to split half of the weight training with the compactor training. The latter will strengthen your legs as well as your torso area. Also, I think you should save this training until after your flight training."

"Oh yeah, is that what those rings are for?"

"Precisely. Like the gravity augmenters, this rings act as a mid-air treadmill, using gravity as the propelling force to push you backwards, these rings also have the capability of supporting speeds up to Mach 150. I believe you know what comes next."

I took a deep breath and floated back to the ground.

"Sure do." I said. "Let's get started."

First, I went to the treadmill. The way S.E.R.A. had this workout set up, was that every 2 minutes, the treadmill would speed up one Mach, and I would have to adjust my speed accordingly. The first 5 Machs were nothing at all. Yes, running at five times the speed of sound was child's play to me. After that, things got increasingly difficult. I was able to get up to Mach 8 with minimal discomfort, but it was already starting to burn a bit on my legs and lungs. If it wasn't for my ability to adapt, i'd have given up within the next 5 Machs. So about my 'adaptiveness', the way it works is, after a decent amount of exposure to pressure or body exertion, my body simply gets strong enough to endure it, and then some. Running at Mach 10 was difficult for the first minute or so, but after that, my body caught a second wind, and easily kept up for the remainder of the trial period. For an hour straight, I climbed up the Mach scale, steadily exhausting myself, and then getting an energy boost after my body adapted to it. How did it feel to run at Mach 30 you may ask. In two short words: Freaking Sweet! At first, the effort was wreaking havoc on my legs, but after adapting to the speed and stamina required to maintain the speed, I started to feel how fun it was. It was like flying but on the ground. Don't get me wrong, i'll always be a flying type of guy, but there's something about running- the adrenaline and the power- that made me feel like I could do anything. Anyway, S.E.R.A. had me on the tread for a few more minutes after I hit Mach 30 before letting me take break. Let me tell you something. My legs screamed in mutiny for the first 3 minutes. I know it's confusing, but the way my body worked, was that while it adapts to fit the nature of the task at hand, it also shuts off the pain receivers, and forgets how bone tired it is until the task is finished. Once it is, my body remembers how much it hurt to do that. Don't get me wrong, after a few minutes of lying on a metal floor, my body patched itself up real nice, and i'd be able to run at Mach 30 without it being hell on my legs, but like the saying goes: First time's always the hardest.

After my break, S.E.R.A. turned on the gravity enhancers, and set them for 5x the earth's gravity. The air didn't change, nothing shot out of the devices, but all of a sudden,it felt like someone really big was trying to push me down to the floor. It felt aggravating in the sense that someone has their hand on your shoulder who you want to get off of you, but as far as difficulty goes, this was easy; of course for you normal people, i'd imagine you'd be crumpling like a can right now. So, here's how my gravity training worked. The length of the room was about 400 meters; I know that because S.E.R.A. told me. With that knowledge, I came up with a 5x earth gravity training montage. In the exact order I ran a mile, did 100 situps, 100 pushups, and washed it all down with 20 sets of thirty meter suicides. For those of you that have never been on a sports team in your life, or have never seen a sports movie, suicides, are just running back and forth nonstop in a designated length; it's meant to improve stamina. After finishing the training montage, S.E.R.A. cranked up the gravity to X10, my limit. And yes, it was actually hard. Where X5 was annoying pressure, X10 was actually heavy, overbearing pressure forcing me downwards; I was actually hunching more than I was standing. As was such, I had to cut my montage in halves. Instead of running a mile, doing 100 situps, 100 pushups, and 20 suicides, I did half of that on the first go, waited five minutes, to get my second wind, and finished the rest of the workout. To be honest, this was a better way of dealing with it. The running was slightly bearable, but thanks to the extra gravity, pushup and situps were hard; especially the up part. By the time I had finished the first part of my workout, I was already half used to the gravity. The other half was a lot easier to deal with and I finished it a lot faster than my previous run by 3 minutes. So yeah, I basically did gravity training up until I reached 50X the earth's gravity, which was like being crushed under a million trucks mind you.

I would've taken another five minute break, but between all the ones I took between gravity training, I had wasted 45 minutes. Besides, I wasn't even winded after finishing up, so I quickly flew up into the gravity rings, and signaled S.E.R.A. to start em up. She started me at Mach 1, and we went up from there. It was just like the running; two minutes in one Mach before kicking it up a notch. Honestly, flying was pretty much effortless, if I wanted to, I probably could've flew all day. But yeah, only went to Mach 30, which by the way was AWESOME! I honestly felt like 1,000 missiles in one; if I was charged with explosive energy, I probably could've leveled 3 cities. Hmmm, now that I think of it, I could add that move to the team's playbook once I got around to making it. So finally, it was time for the moment of truth.

S.E.R.A. and I decided to save this part of the training until second to last, due to preparation purposes, but after gravity and flight training, she got me strapped into the torture rack and we got started. First, we started with blunt force. S.E.R.A. brought out some really big metal fists that were rocket propulsed, and started hitting me with them. At first, they didn't hurt, but that was because she had the setting at level 1; it wouldn't be another five more levels until the fists started to hurt. The fists weren't very fast, only moving at about four hits per second, but they made up for that with the pain. At level 6, it felt like an average punch to me; by the way, the fists were targeting my, body, face, legs, arms, everything. S.E.R.A. kept me on this level until I stopped grunting in pain, which meant that I was ready for the next level. So yeah, I went up the pain scale up until I reached level 10, which by the way, felt like Mike Tyson level punches. To put this all into perspective, at level 10, I was basically taking blows that could shatter a tank into 1000 pieces, blow a hole straight through steel, and fly straight through the moon. It wasn't fun for me at all, but it did help me get more durable. Like I said, it didn't draw blood, or leave any bruises, but it was quite the kicker.

After the blunt force was over, S.E.R.A. escalated the torture rack up to energy damage. Yep, for the next 30 minutes, I was target practice for fire, light, and electrical blasts. The fire didn't hurt nearly as much as it should've, and I should probably thank Dragon Empress for that; so for the 10 minutes of constant exposure, I was basically in a tanning bed. It was kinda relaxing, even if it was 10,000 degrees of fire being hosed on me. The light energy was, just weird to be frank. I could tell it was because of the gravity training as well as the first part of the pain training, but even after being bombarded with enough energy to give an atomic bomb a run for it's money, the most I could say about it was it stung a great deal, but nothing legendary. Finally, the electricity was just a joke. No offense to Jason, but after 10 minutes of being blasted with half a million volts, through excruciating for the first two minutes, I was basically laughing my butt off due to the pain becoming little more than a heavy prickling sensation.

After the pain ordeal was over, I got down to the moment I had been waiting for since the training began: weight lifting. I loved weight lifting, even before I had my powers. There, was something about the struggle of it that excited me; it made me feel like I was overcoming massive obstacles, and that nothing could get in my way so long as I worked hard enough to move it. I started small, setting two of the dumbbells to 1,000 pounds, and doing 50 reps on each arm to get me loose. After that, I got under the huge barbell, told S.E.R.A. to set the weight for 3,000 tons. S.E.R.A. and I worked out a steady flow for me to build my strength on. I would lift 100 reps at each setting, and after that was done, she'd crank up the weight by another half a ton, and i'd go up from there. I did this for like a whole hour straight without stopping, and even after lifting 50,000 tons, I still didn't break a sweat, although I was starting to feel the burn in my arms. I could've kept lifting all night, but after 50,000 tons, it was time to make my way to the crusher. This time, S.E.R.A. set me on a 'take no prisoners' type of training setting, and set the compactor to drop at 60,000 tons of pressure. The thing dropped so fast, my body called for a Timeout, and I just managed to stop the hunk of metal from…. crashing into me. Yeah, this whole danger element is hard to play off with me being invulnerable and stuff. So yeah, I caught the compactor, but boy was it heavy. The weight forced me to my knees, and for the first time in the whole training period, I was actually breathing hard. The crusher kept me pinned down for five minutes before I found the strength to push it up, and stand to my feet. Of course, S.E.R.A. kept trying to hold me down, and cranked the pressure up to 70,000. The same cycle continued for another 20,000 tons. I struggled under the weight for a little bit, managed to lift it up again, and S.E.R.A. put the pressure back on me. Finally, after making it past 90,000 tons, S.E.R.A. cranked up the weight to 100,000 tons; my personal goal. Struggling under that, was worse than lifting the Dragon Empress's ship. Sure it was only 4,000 extra tons, but when I was lifting that ship, I was in the air. Now that I was on a solid surface to stand on, I was caught between a rock and a hard place. It was hard no doubt, in fact it took me a few minutes longer to lift this weight, but after a while, I managed to get to my feet. I took deep breaths, and after a while later, managed to stand completely upright. Finally, with every ounce of strength I had in me, I lifted the compactor completely over my head with a yell of triumph. S.E.R.A. lifted the weight off of me, and I collapsed to the floor in relief.

I stayed there for a few minutes while I caught my breath. After standing up, I checked my watch, and nearly had a stroke when I realized it was 12:21 in the morning. I rushed back to my room, showered, put on some boxer briefs, and crashed into bed. Maybe half a minute later, I was out like a light.

(Jason's Perspective)

So at this point, i'm assuming you get the picture. Yep, this is all just one big pile of training stories. I apologize if this is old by now, in fact I wanted to skip this whole thing entirely, but Fury and Coulson made me add it in for explanatory purposes. Just bear with me for a little longer, it'll be over soon.

So after dinner, I made my way over to room 120X, uploaded S.E.R.A., and took a seat on the floor. I could've created a construct to sit on or something, but sitting on electricity isn't really comfortable.

"Good evening Master Jason," S.E.R.A. said once she popped into the air. "How may I be of service?"

"The scan you did last night on me," I said. "Let me see what you got out of it please."

"Of course Master Jason. One moment."

Her face morphed into a screen with data going up the side like animation credits. On the main screen was a body diagram, with a bunch of bullets highlighting certain regions like the head, chest, legs, and arms.

"I have organized your biometric analysis into three sections." she said. " &amp; Current Status, 2. Power Development Capabilities, 3. Suggested Practices for Power Development. How would you like me to proceed with said information?"

"1-3 S.E.R.A.," I said. "Let's see what you got."

"First of all," S.E.R.A. started. "Your mutant ability to control and generate electricity comes from your body being able to harness and greatly enhance it's natural static electricity, as well as the electricity in the atmosphere around you. This same power allows your body to use it's natural static field to sense and alert you to immediate threats around you. It seems as though you posses a small degree of weather manipulation, as seen by your ability to create storm clouds, but that may only be a side effect of summoning lightning from thin air. Your speed, like Master Grant's, comes from the greatly enhanced interaction between your cells; however it seems as though your speed can be augmented by your electric powers. Also, like Master Grant, you have a healing and adaptive factor that, with proper stimulation, can equip you to be able to strengthen body density, strength, and stamina. As far as I can tell from your biometric scans, your mutant ability is only functioning at 20% of it's full potential. After performing my suggested practices the percentage should bump up by 30 or so, but there is still an unharnessed and unidentified source of energy that has yet to be unlocked."

"Any idea what i'll get once I can use that energy source?" I asked her.

"Data suggests that your abilities will be heavily augmented, but the data is inconclusive; you could end up with another power set altogether."

"Sounds interesting, but let's cross that bridge when we get to it. Now, I wanna get to the who power development thing."

"As you wish Master Jason. Your body's natural ability to enhance the interaction between your cells can be improved upon by giving them an electric jump at a cellular level."

"You mean like the way I did it with Grant?" I asked her.

"Precisely Master Jason," she responded. "I have calculated the required electricity needed to perform this feat, and while the experience may be a little disorienting at first, it will improve your speed at a phenomenal pace, increase the capacity for your energy reserves, and broaden the static field that encases you and alerts your body to threats."

"I call it my Speed Sense."

"Very well. Your body's durability and endurance can also be improved upon by exerting it to it's maximum limit, and then using your electricity to regenerate your energy, and give your body a small strength boost in the process."

"Oh yeah," I said. "Like today, after I wailed on a punching bag non-stop and healed up with some voltage; I got some muscle tone after that."

"That is only the surface of what can be achieved with your regenerative healing. You can push your body to be able to lift more than 1000 pounds, survive at 10X the earth's gravity, and make your skin completely bulletproof."

I couldn't help but smile at the thought of that.

"Sounds good," I said. "Anything else."

"Yes," S.E.R.A. said. "The burst of cellular interaction will allow for greater control and maneuverability for your lightning bolts. With proper training, you will be able to change it's direction, and release and control multiple tendrils of electricity that will lock onto your target, and avoid civilians, bystanders, or allies. That is all for the power development analysis; are you ready to move on to the next section?"

Wait a minute, that was it? I didn't expect my training list to be a mile long, but I still thought I was worth more than that.

"Yeah sure," I said, biting down my frustration. "What do you need me to do?"

A circle of blue light formed in the chest of my body diagram, and pulses were resonating throughout the rest of the body from that point of origin.

"First," S.E.R.A. said. "I need you to amplify you're cellular interaction. Based on my analysis, 50,000 volts should be sufficient enough to charge them to their maximum potential. All you need do is focus on charging yourself at a cellular level and let the power go."

The room was engulfed in a flash of light, and when it died down, a treadmill was lodged near a corner of the room, to the right was a set of weird looking weights you'd never see at an average gym, and in each corner of the room sat some sort of high tech looking containers that were as big as tires.

"After I analyze the change in your powers," S.E.R.A. said. "We can improve on your speed levels. As far as I can sense, you are capable at running at Mach 8 at your maximum. With training, I can have you up to Mach 30 in an hour or less; lightspeed may even be possible for you in the distant future. The set of weights by the corner will serve to increase your strength. I'll have you keep lifting until you are able to bench 1,000 pounds with little to no effort. Afterwards, we'll work on your durability. The devices you see in the corners of the room are gravity augmenters. They will increase the gravity of the room by however much I want them to be to; it is up to you to train while under these extreme conditions. Finally, after all of the previous exercises are completed, I will help you through controlling the extended nature of your electric blasts. Are you ready to proceed with the course of action I have planned out for you."

"Yeah," I said. Let's get to work."

The first step was the hardest. S.E.R.A. instructed me to create a ball of electricity in my chest, and force it to supercharge my cells with the energy. At first it was tough and aggravating, it seemed like the only thing I was electrifying was my ribs. Finally, after five failed attempts, I managed to pull it off by closing my eyes, sensing my own cells, and forcing the energy in my chest to resonate down to that level. The rush of energy came so suddenly, I didn't even have time to prepare for it. I felt like I was a dam that someone had broken, and now all of the water was flooding in. I lost control of my powers, and electricity exploded everywhere in violent and unpredictable flashes. At one point I was actually consumed with so much energy that I was levitating off of the ground, which I couldn't enjoy, because I was trapped in my own tesla orb. Finally, after it seemed like I was gonna be the world's first human light bulb, the energy overload stopped suddenly, and I dropped to the floor. S.E.R.A. was right, the experience was disorienting, like I had just gotten out of the water after being splashed around violently. I tried to process the ramifications that the surge had on my cells, but the truth was I couldn't accurately feel them anymore; they were moving too fast.

S.E.R.A. stepped in and scanned me with some sort of laser, and started calculating my new abilities (why couldn't she just do that last night?).

"Well Master Jason," she started after the scan was complete. "It looks as though your cells are moving so fast, that you now have the ability to vibrate your molecules at speeds that will enable you to phase through solid objects. Your speed has been increased tenfold, and you now have access to 100% of your brain capacity, allowing for greater reflexes and photographic memory. Also, you have broken the cap that was hampering your ability to absorb and generate electricity. Now, your body can store a limitless amount of electricity, as well as generate electricity without the need for you to manually recharge your reserves."

Ok that was pretty cool. I was stoked about the whole 100% brain access thing, but then again, it didn't turn me into Lucy. But seriously, I was flexible enough to do splits, and do triple flips in mid-air. I didn't buy the whole photographic memory thing, but after reading 1,000 words of a section from Moby Dick (S.E.R.A.'s idea), and being able to recite every word by heart, I caught onto the fact that I was now a genius. After shaking off my lingering feelings of dizziness, I stepped onto the treadmill, and got to work.

The way she had me set up, was to take it one Mach at a time up until I reached Mach 30; 100,000 or so mph. Honestly, I was bored out of my mind for the first 10 Machs, and that's saying something, considering that I had to bend over backwards to even dream of moving this fast yesterday. By the way, I may have been exaggerating a bit when I said I could move at half the speed of light, but I was just showing off. Anyway, for the next hour, I steadily climbed up the Mach scale, making hyperspeed seem like a casual jog. Honestly, I should've been getting tired. My legs should've been screaming in agony, my lungs should've felt like lead being juggled around in my chest, and breathing should've been as comfortable as gargling nails. Yet, I was fine. Seriously, I was running at Mach 15, which is roughly around 10,500 mph, and I honestly could've run like that for hours with no rest at all. Part of my newfound stamina was due to my cellular reconfiguration. After my body settled, my energy reserves were through the roof; even now, I didn't even need to focus on regenerating my Speed Mode Momentum; the more energy I used, the more my body generated for me to keep using. So long story short, running at 100,000 mph to me, only felt like going two laps around a track

After finishing up my running session, S.E.R.A. walked me through the art of speed phasing. To be honest, it was way harder than anything i've ever attempted. S.E.R.A. said that I could only achieve this by accelerating my body molecules up to the point to where they were no longer solid, and thus able to phase through solid objects. She raised a 10 foot metal wall in the center of the room and instructed me to phase though it. The first time, I focused on making my molecules vibrate until I literally felt like I was nothing but wind. I ran forward, and crashed into the wall. I tried it again five times over with no success, swearing excessively with each failure until I decided to pick up a new strategy. It was obvious that I wasn't ready to phase through the wall all at once, so I brought it down to a smaller level. I focused on making my hand vibrate with enough speed to phase through the wall. When I cautiously put my hand to the wall, it made it through. That's when it hit me: I lost my focus whenever I had failed. In order to phase, I had to be fast enough and maintain my focus. For the next five minutes I focused on phasing different parts of my body, and phasing them through the wall; eventually managing to walk through it. Finally, after I had that down, I tried running through it one more time. This time, I made it through, and for the next five minutes, S.E.R.A. had me run around the room while she randomly sprouted walls for me to run through. It would've been difficult, but thanks to my enhanced Speed Sense, I could tell that the walls were coming before they had even made it all the way up.

The next step of my training involved the using the gravity augmenters. S.E.R.A. set the augmenters for 2X the earth's gravity, which felt like someone dropping a 200 pound blanket over me, and left me to my work. At first, I didn't know what to do, but then I flashed back seven years ago. You see, ever since I was little, I had always loved hockey. Yeah I know, black people don't usually like hockey, but I was different (I was a huge fan of the Mighty Ducks movies). Doris saw this, and made me sign up to play for the rec team when I was ten, and didn't let me quit until I was 13. For conditioning, the coach would take us to a football field, have us run the entire hundred yards, and do 10 pushups before coming back, and repeating the process five times over. Running at 2X the earth's gravity was no walk in the park, but I managed to do it. Yes, five times, I ran up and down the room doing 10 pushups at every stop. It was hard at first (especially the part where I had to get up), but midway through the third set, my body began to surge with voltage, and I felt myself get...tougher is the best word I can use to describe it. It was if my body recognized that it was unfit for it's current environment, and tapped into my powers to adjust itself accordingly. After the five sets were up, I worked on my Kung-Fu. Nothing special, just basic punches, combos, and a few jumping roundhouses for good measure. I did that for five minutes before S.E.R.A. decided to up the playing field. She took it two at a time until I reached X10, but boy was each step up a chore. All the while I was pushing myself to the limit, my body was simultaneously crackling with runoff energy, like I was overloading. I felt my heart kicking into overdrive, struggling to keep up with the weight of the environment. I could feel my body becoming denser, heavier, and more rugged; I had no doubt that I was now immune to gunfire at this point. It was the most grueling 25 minutes of training that I had ever went through in my life, but I came out of it stronger than a Marine (no offense to the armed forces, you guys totally rock). S.E.R.A. tested my newfound density by opening fire on me with plastic bullets (nonlethal, but still strong enough to break ribs). They honestly felt like a baby was poking me multiple times everywhere, other than that I didn't feel a thing. S.E.R.A. even tried real bullets (without telling me), but the impact still felt the same, even my clothes weren't damaged (they were made with a mixture of polyester and unstable molecules).

After gravity training, I started lifting over at the weights section. Without my powers, I was able to bench 200 max, so I started there. S.E.R.A. set me up on a schedule to where after I did 50 reps, I would take a 2 minute break, and lift 50 more pounds than before; but I honestly didn't need it. I was so pumped up after training that even after I hit the 1,000 pound mark, I only felt like I was going at half my strength, so I requested extended lifting. After 1,000 pounds, that was when I started to feel the burn. S.E.R.A. set me up again, but this time, raising the bar by 100 after each set. At first, I was just skillin it; that was until I hit 1,500 pounds. After that, I actually needed to take the occasional two minute breaks between sets; it only got worse from there. Lifting the next 500 added pounds was pure agony on my arms and chest, it was all I could do to keep the bar from slipping between my fingers. Somehow though, I managed to push through it, and after feeling like I was struggling against a trash compactor, I managed to finish 50 reps at 2,000 pounds. Yep, I could lift a whole ton (yeah I know not much compared to Grant , but still cut me some slack, super strength, isn't my thing)!

Finally, after taking a five minute break between my weight lifting, I started on my lightning training or whatever you wanna call it. First, the room flashed bright again, and when the light died down, all of the equipment was gone, and in their place were a bunch of metal dummies. Some of them had targets on their chests, while other one's didn't. That wouldn't have been a problem, if they weren't in such close proximity to one another, there would be no way for me to hit one, without hitting another.

"New objective," S.E.R.A. said. "Deploy energy redirection tactics to destroy targeted enemies without damaging untargeted ones."

"How am I supposed that?" I asked her.

"By concentrating Master Jason. You are now in control of 100% of your brain capacity. This means that not only are you smarter, and in more control over your body, but your abilities are connected to you now more than ever. Focus on hitting the targets you want to hit, and then redirecting the energy to attack another. You can do this Master Jason, you need only focus."

I took a deep breath and willed my hand to surge with power. The only way that I could make this work was with a narrow bolt of lightning; anything else would have caused collateral damage. I focused on the targeted dummy right in my line of sight, looked around for the other ones, and focused my shot. The first few times I failed miserably, barely managing to make the bolt flinch before it rammed into another dummy. Afterwards, I managed to make it move in sudden jerks, but it was still like trying to control a dog that wanted to run when you wanted to walk (don't ask). In other words, I was fighting to control the lightning, but the lightning was winning. Finally, after watching me struggle for 20 minutes with this thing, S.E.R.A. stepped in to help me.

"You are focusing too much on trying not to fail Master Jason," she said. "Remember, your powers are an extension of yourself; an extra arm for you to use. Don't cloud your mind with doubt and frustration, don't think of your powers as just a tool for you to use. See them for what they really are, a manifestation of your consciousness, and make them work for you."

She was definitely one heck of a mentor, i'll give her that much. And for what it's worth, her advice worked. I closed my eyes and focused on the static electricity lingering in the air. It was in that moment that I realized how useless my eyes actually were right now. You see everything is surrounded by a vague field of electricity. By focusing on sensing this energy, I could pinpoint where everything was, even if I wasn't looking at it. I sensed all of the targets that I had to hit, as well as the ones that were to be spared. Then, I pretty much locked on to the targets, willed my lightning bolt to hit only those ones, and I let it go as I opened my eyes. It was like I had shot out a heat seeking missile. The bolt demolished the targets I had picked out, zigzagged around the ones I had excluded, and found it's mark every time; I didn't even have to redirect it. S.E.R.A. had me do this exercise five more times, until she was convinced that I had the redirection thing down. Next, we went on to shooting and controlling multiple bolts of lightning. This was honestly way easier than I thought it was gonna be. First off, I just willed five different bolts of lightning to shoot our of either fist, like I was a human thundercloud, and my powers obeyed. After my ordeal with the first redirection task, this one was only slightly challenging. While there were more bolts to work with, I kept the targets locked in my mind, and willed the ten bolts of terror (not an official name) to only attack those targets. Sometimes my bolts hit the same target, or had to double back into each other to avoid hitting unwanted targets, but after the dust had settled, all of my targets were destroyed, and not one of the unwanted targets were harmed.

At this point S.E.R.A. said that I could hang up and go, but I wanted to stay a bit longer. I could feel that there was so much potential for my powers to develop, and I spent the next two hours working on that. First off, I focused on replicating moves I saw when I played through inFamous (very good game). I made lightning grenades, fired megawatt blasts, I even launched myself in the air with a lightning bolt, charged myself up to insane power levels, and unleashed a massive shock wave when I landed. I did some of the other moves I saw on the game, like lightning tether (fun, but not effective, i'll leave the swinging to Spider-Man), but there wasn't much left to copy; everything else that could be done, like creating lightning blades, I had already done. Instead, I decided to focus on making, and controlling more elaborate constructs. I started simple, making things like bladed whirl storms, charging trains and buses, even missiles and jets once I got around to it. Yet, that wasn't good enough for me, I needed to think bigger. I took a page from Allyson's book, and focused on creating my own personal army. Unlike her I wasn't going for angels, but Spartans. It took a little bit of time to get the hang of controlling multiple constructs at once, but that was before I figured out that it was more prudent to give each construct it's own life support; basically giving them a set amount of energy to use, that would come back to me when it was exhausted, or if they were destroyed. And yes, the Spartans were totally bad ass. After that, I went back to basics, and focused on creating giant animal constructs. From lions, to tigers, to bears (don't say it), rhinos, bulls, sharks, etc. I even managed to encase myself in enough electrical energy to make a combat avatar shaped like Way Big (Ben 10 stuff). After the construct training, which left me beat, I checked my watch. It was 11:50, and I was about to go to my room and get some z's, when an idea popped in my head.

"Hey S.E.R.A.?" I asked her.

"Yes Master Jason?" she responded.

"Tomorrow, I wanna surprise the team with a little villain simulation battle. Can you set that up for me?"

"Of course Master Jason; and how would you like the simulations to occur?"

"Set it up to five levels, make them challenging, use whatever villains you want, and don't tell me what your planning; I wanna be just as surprised as the rest of my team."

"As you command. I will make the arrangements."

"Thank you," I said as I exited the room.

I went straight to my room, took a shower, put on my PJ's, and crashed into bed.

That night, I dreamed of the two voices again.

"_Is it time?" _one of them asked.

"_Yes," _the other one said. "_This one will be interesting."_

"_Who will succeed?"_

"_To Hel if I know, most likely the one's who arrive at the scene the swiftest."_

"_You know they will. If that happens, it will all be over before it begins."_

"_Not unless they get a little surprise."_

When I woke up, something felt off. First of all, I realized I was more hungry than I had ever been in my life; not even kidding. I was gonna just throw something on quickly and not even bother to properly get ready for the day, but then I noticed something lying at the foot of my bed. It was a bar with a green wrapper on it, with a yellow lightning bolt painted on top. On the bar was a note, I took it, and read: _Eat it, us speedsters gotta look out for each other, and you use up more energy than a city full of lights-Pietro. _I didn't know who 'Pietro' was, but I had a pretty good idea considering there was only one speedster other than me and Grant (and somewhat Allyson) on this ship. I unwrapped the bar, which was some kind of honey flavored energy bar and ate it. All of a sudden it was like my immense hunger was cut in half. Sure, I could still eat a bunch, but now I wasn't starving enough to where I couldn't focus. I made a mental note to thank Quicksilver for the bar (and apologize for blasting him to Kingdom Come), and quickly got up to get ready for training and whatever. That brings me to my other point. Have you ever woken up, and just knew in your heart of hearts, that this day, for whatever reason, was gonna be just unpleasant? Well I did, even while showering, and brushing my teeth, I couldn't shake off the feeling that something bad was gonna happen today; and believe me, the last thing I needed in my life was more bad. Anyway, I made my way down to the cafeteria, got my usual platters of pancakes, cereal, muffins, and juice, and sat down at the team's table. Grant and Allyson didn't come in until five minutes later, although they filed in one by one. We were all dressed in our workout gear (ironically all wearing black), and after a few minutes, we started talking about our training sessions. Allyson, as it turned out, got a hold on that advanced power she tapped into yesterday.

"Dude!" Grant said. "That is so unfair, you can go at like, a million miles per hour."

"A million miles per second," Allyson corrected him. "And that's only when i'm in Super Sunbird."

She explained how her extra powers, the one's she used when she fought Venom, worked.

"So now you can lift 300 tons, you're bulletproof, and a living atomic bomb?" Grant said. "Can I call cheating on that?"

"Jealous?"

"Hardly, just wait until you hear what I can do now."

Grant gave us the rundown on his progress last night. Apparently, he could run at Mach 30, just like me (although probably not as effortless), and was able to withstand up to 50X the earth's gravity; not to mention lift 100,000 tons. Plus, he was durable enough to take a missile point blank without any damage; not bad.

"Yep," he said smiling smugly. "I am amazing."

"Not bad," Allyson said. "But you still can't fire atomic bomb like blasts"

"You know what Allyson?"

Before they could get into a power debate (which Allyson would have totally won), I interrupted them, and started explaining to them why I was clearly better. I went over my whole cell jumpstart thing, me being a genius, me running at Mach 30, lifting 2,000 pounds, plus all of the new constructs I could create. I didn't think they would be impressed, but it looked like they were pretty starstruck.

"Wait a minute," Grant said. "You can use 100% of your brain? Does that make you Lucy now?"

"Not so much," I said. "Besides, she became everything at the end of that movie, I don't wanna go through that. But I do have better reflexes, body control, and photographic memory."

"Not too bad. Hey at least studying for tests will be a breeze from now on huh?"

"True that."

"Besides, the amount you can lift? Dude, you gotta join a team or something, so much athletic potential can't just go to waste."

"I'll keep that in mind, next to my secret dreams of being a ballerina."

That actually earned a laugh from Allyson, although she did try to hide it.

"Yeah, yeah," Grant said. "Laugh it up, but i'm telling you bro, you'd make an excellent wide receiver, or running back. So, what are we doing today?"

"First," I said. "We're gonna get warmed up with some Kung-Fu, and weapons training. Then I had S.E.R.A. set up a simulation for us with the data on some of the villains we studied the night before. Should be interesting, and it should keep us busy till lunch; after that, you guys can do whatever. Train, rest, whateves."

"Wait," Grant said. "Before we do the whole simulation thing, can we take some time out to practice some of the moves I made up in the Delta Playbook."

"The what?!" Allyson and I said at the same time.

Grant pulled out a black notebook, wrote in it at super speed, and handed it over to me.

"After training," he said. "I went to my room, and had the idea of combining our powers in semi elaborate operations. You see, one of the team's problem, like any new team, is that we don't have a single expected flow to our attacks and strategies. Sure, sometimes this can be useful, but I feel, just in case we need it, we should have multiple plans of attack that bring out the best in our powers and skills. I quickly added a few more to the list in light of our new abilities. Go ahead, give it a look."

I opened the book, and flashed though all of the pages. It didn't take me too long to read through the thing, but then again, super speed, plus photographic memory, equals instant three hour study. Honestly, the ideas in here were pretty good, I didn't know Grant was such a strategist. All of the plans came with elaborately drawn depictions of stick figures beating up on one, or many robots (which ironically enough were drawn pretty damn good). And yes, for your convenience, here's a look at the official Delta Playbook.

Delta Playbook:

*Delta Power Chain:Super-G knocks villain high into the air, Sunbird blasts him towards the ground, and Thunder-Man gets a running start, and kicks him with a high speed lightning kick.

*Delta Speed Thrasher:A triple super speed assault. Super-G strikes at the chest, Thunder-Man strikes at the back, and Sunbird kicks the face, and takes out the knees. Once the opponent is down, all team members attack the downed bad guy in a continuous circle.

*Delta Killer:Super-G launches the enemy into the air with a powerful uppercut, Thunder-Man summons a lightning strike from the air, while Sunbird shoots a concentrated bolt of light from the ground, trapping the enemy in two deadly energy attacks.

*Delta Cannon:A combined Kamehameha-like cannon powered by lightning and Sun Energy.

*Weapons Frenzy:A barrage of missile and sword constructs.

*Air Force:A barrage of jet constructs

*Demolition Derby:Super-G and Sunbird launch the enemy into the air, pound on him for a bit, knock him to the ground, and the guy gets crushed between two train constructs, created by Sunbird and Thunder-Man.

*Animal Kingdom:A barrage of raging animal constructs.

*Aerodynamics:Thunder-Man launches the enemy into the air with a lightning geyser, and the guy gets a beat down from Super-G and Sunbird before getting blasted to the ground again by a bolt of lightning.

*Hammer Time:A continuous beat down using giant hammer constructs.

*Delta Bomb:A combined energy ball made of lightning and Sun Energy, kicked like a soccer ball by Super-G.

*Delta Vortex:A vortex made of lightning and Sun Energy

*Delta Barrage: a continuous barrage of energy blasts from every direction.

After reading through the list of moves, I handed them over to Allyson to check out too.

"Dude," I said to Grant. "Those are really good, when did you have the time to make that stuff up."

"Come on Jason," Grant responded. "We're speedsters bro, we don't find time, we make time."

We gave each other a fist bump.

"Besides," he continued. "It's not complete yet, just some basic power set combos. I got the idea for it during training yesterday, but didn't start developing ideas until this morning, after I finished messaging Mrs. Kennedy."

"What did you message her for?" Allyson asked him as she handed him the notebook back.

"Upgrades for my axe and such," he said. "I don't wanna spoil the surprise, but let's just say in a few hours, i'm gonna be fully loaded."

"Whatever man," I said as I shrugged. "By the way, are you open for ideas from outside sources?"

"Of course man, inspiration comes from everywhere. Why? You got something in mind?

"Yeah, I was thinking we do a move where you launch the enemy into the air, and Allyson and I create huge combat avatars, energy bodies around ourselves, to pretty much use the poor guy as a living tennis ball."

"Sounds epic enough, you gotta name for it?"

"Avatar Beatdown?"

"Yeah that'll work!"

He opened his notebook again, and started scribbling furiously. After that, we focused on eating again, and after breakfast was over, made our way over to 135X to start training. We started off with an hour of Kung-Fu practice, followed by weapons practice for another hour. I stayed true to my word and allowed Grant a few practice matches against me. I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised. He took up a dual wielding attack formation, using his right hand for the sword, and the left for the axe. Even with my sword and shield fighting style, Grant gave me a decent run for my money. His defense was phenomenal, in fact of the five times I managed to beat him (out of five matches), three wins were because he would make a mistake and rush in for a finishing move, and i'd simply avoid his rush, and slash him in the back. Otherwise, I rarely ever managed to break, or get inside his defense. On the other hand, his offense was pretty good as well. He seemed to follow Allyson's style of strike hard and fast. Add that with the fact that he was swinging a one-hundred pound axe like a tennis racket, and you get a really deadly fighter; if it wasn't for my lessons with Nightcrawler about not relying purely on sword or shield, plus my expert dodging skills, i'm not afraid to admit that Grant might've got me a good few times. After weapons training, we started working on moves from the Delta Playbook. Grant had us execute the moves five times each to prove that we had them down. We got through Delta Power Chain pretty quick, testing out our moves on various Titans; and after 10 minutes of practice, managed to find a natural flow for executing Delta Speed Thrasher. After that, executing the rest of the moves were easier than collapsing dominoes. Sure, moves like Demolition Derby, Aerodynamics, and Hammer Time took a bit more time to perfect, but we got through it all in about an hour. After finishing practicing the Delta Plays, I let the team take a small 10 minute break before uploading S.E.R.A. and asking her to start the simulations that she had prepared for us.

"Of course Master Jason," she said. "Prepare yourselves."

Before I could ask what for, a bright flash enveloped the room, and I felt myself being pulled into some sort vacuum. When I readjusted my eyes, I found myself, and the rest of the team, in New York City. That didn't make sense for obvious reasons, but even more so considering the fact that no people, cars, or vendors were combing the streets.

"Okaaay," Grant said as he got up. "Where are we? And for the record, this is so not my fault, I didn't touch anything."

"Do not concern yourselves," said S.E.R.A., who by the way, was projected high into the air, bigger than a jumbo jet. "You have all been transfigured into data, and are currently inside my programming. Your powers will not be affected by this transition, you will not suffer any effects from the conversion, and if Colonel Fury should have need of you, I can swiftly eject you from my systems."

"But why did you absorb us into your systems?" I asked her. "Wouldn't it have been easier to project the images out in the real world?"

"To the contrary Master Jason, projecting the images of your enemies as holographic tricks on practice bots would not be a very effective training exercise. You have all displayed the ability to effortlessly dispatch practice robots. I have analyzed your current power levels and abilities, compared that of them to the ones of your future opponents, and have put you in an environment where you can get accurate challenges according to opponents and their power levels. To further challenge your abilities, I have set up certain side missions for you to handle alongside your primary battles. Do any of you have any questions before we begin the simulations?"

"How many simulations are we gonna do?" Allyson asked her. "And how long is it gonna take us to plow through them?"

"I have set up five different levels for you," S.E.R.A. said. "Completion is estimated at approximately 90 minutes."

"An hour and thirty minutes?" Allyson said as she put her hands on her hips. "Fine, as long as we don't train through lunch; these training bits leave me starving."

I wanted to tell her to get in line.

"Do not concern yourself with worry Allyson." S.E.R.A. "Your tasks will be finished in time for you to consume your daily food requirements. Are you all ready to proceed with the simulations now?"

We all nodded and said yes. A moment later, a huge wave of light flashed across the virtual city. When the light had passed, there were huge metal jack-o-lanterns perched on top of four different skyscrapers that paced about a mile apart from each other, forming a square-like perimeter around the city. Furthermore, the Green Goblin, some crazy dude in a green and purple getup with elf ears, was riding around the air, laughing like a madman and throwing pumpkin bombs in every direction.

"Level 1," S.E.R.A. said. "Your objective is to stop the Green Goblin from detonating the bombs you see perched on the four skyscrapers. The bombs will detonate in three minutes, although the Goblin can trigger them manually if he suspects that you are tampering with his equipment. Your time starts now."

Green Goblin turned and faced our general direction, suddenly aware of our existence, and charged at us on his glider. Even without Speed Mode, we could have had a whole conversation without him getting close to us; but I didn't take any chances, and ordered the team to speed up.

"Ok guys," I said. "We gotta take him down fast, before he can detonate those bombs. I can feel the electricity that powers them, but I don't wanna risk him catching sight of my lightning trail. I'm gonna knock him out of the sky with a bolt of lightning. Grant, you make sure he doesn't get back up while I work on defusing the bombs."

"My pleasure bro," he said while cracking his knuckles.

"Hold on," Allyson said. "What about me?"

"Sorry Allyson," I said. "But we don't exactly need you to finish this mission, besides, it's gonna be really short anyway."

She didn't look all that happy about taking the bench for this one, but she grudgingly accepted her position. I put the plan into action by coming down from Speed Mode, and summoning a huge bolt of lightning from the sky to strike Goblin down. Even as I made my way up the first skyscraper, I could hear the huge boom of Grant's first impacting Goblin's face. I went to work immediately, draining the energy from the first lantern, and quickly moving on to drain the other three. In total, it took about 20 seconds to defuse all of the bombs and get back to the team. The city flashed again, and when it had finished, I was surprised to see the city starting to crumble. At the base of city hall (that's where Goblin landed), stood four villains:Rhino, Dr. Octopus, Vulture, and The Shocker; who was standing on top of city hall, vibrating like an earthquake.

"Level 2," S.E.R.A. said. "Defeat the four villains before The Shocker can reduce the city to rubble using his upgraded Vibro-Shock Gloves. Level begins now."

As Rhino, Vulture, and Dr. Octopus charged us, we immediately went into Speed Mode; at this point, this was a part of our team dynamic.

"Grant, take out The Shocker," I said, not bothering with formalities. "Allyson take care of Vulture quickly, then start working on Dr. Octopus. As for me, i'll keep Rhino busy until Grant gets back, then i'll help you take down four arms if you still need it. Assuming Grant hasn't knocked Rhino's lights out by the time we're done with that, we'll help him out."

I could tell that the team was on board with my plan, except for the fact that they thought Rhino was gonna steamroll me. To shut them up and prove a point, I created a charging train construct, and launched Rhino though City Hall, and probably three more buildings. After that, Grant and Allyson had no problem with letting me handle my business. Grant quickly charged at The Shocker like a human missile, and started to pound away at him furiously (although Shocker was putting up a little fight). Allyson flew at Vulture, not even bothering to shield herself from the razor wing projectiles he was flinging at her, and shot him out of the sky with a missile construct. Vulture was knocked out instantly, and Allyson started blasting at the Doc. He blocked most of her shots with his tentacles, and started lashing them at her; forcing her to maneuver in mid-air while creating different types of constructs to knock the Doctor off-balance. She was doing pretty good, especially when she hit him with an exploding mini sun, and moved in, attacking him with spiked fist constructs over her actual ones, and I was about to give her a hand, but my Speed Sense went off. I looked forward and saw Rhino charging at me through the hole in City Hall (I had forgotten about him). I waited until he was several feet in front of me, and created a lightning geyser under his feet, launching him a good ten feet in the air. I brought him back down to earth with a huge lightning strike, but apparently, that wasn't enough to knock his lights out, because my Speed Sense went off, and I had to roll out of the way of his massive charge. He stopped and turned around, getting ready for another charge (he's not all that bright). But before he could, Grant dropped out of the sky, hitting him with a huge right punch, and started beating him down furiously. Rhino was definitely strong enough to give him a bit of fun, but I could tell Grant had this guy.

"GO HELP SUNBIRD!" he said confirming my thoughts. "I GOT THIS GUY!"

I didn't question him, and raced to help her out. As far as it went, she was handling the situation just fine, but it was pretty evident that she could use an extra set of hands. I created a set of spiked fists around my own hands, raced behind Dr. Octopus' back, and brought a hard right hook to his head; he crumpled to the ground.

"I had it covered." Allyson said indignantly.

"I believe you," I said. "Just trying to be helpful is all; now come on, let's help Grant finish Rhino off."

Allyson nodded, and together, we sprinted after Grant (it was so weird seeing her run at my speed). When we caught up to him a nanosecond later, he had punched Rhino so hard, that the poor guy went flying through 7 skyscraper lobbies.

"You guys arrived just in time to see the show," he said with a grin.

"Sorry we could only catch the end," I said back.

Apparently, I spoke too soon. I heard Rhino yell really loud, and could see him charging at us from half a mile away (100% brain usage equals enhanced senses, I can hear, see, smell, and I guess feel, 10X greater than the average person). Grant looked at him with a sense of amusement.

"What do you say guys?" he asked me and Allyson. "Demolition Derby time?"

"You know it." I said.

"Let's do it!" Allyson said.

Grant and Allyson flew at Rhino like bats from hell, and started wailing on him with some punch and kick combos. Allyson backflip kicked him under his chin, a bolt of light erupting from her foot, and sent him high into the air. Allyson and Grant kept up the assault in mid-air before Grant hammer punched him back to the ground. Finally, Rhino got up, only to be caught in the middle of a lightning/solar train sandwich. The trains exploded once they collided with each other, and when the smoke cleared, Rhino was lying unconscious (or dead) on the ground. S.E.R.A. swept up the mess, and gave us an entirely new set of villains to face off against. Apparently, she knew posthaste that we would be a team of demigods, because this time, she gave us a challenge worthy of our skills. Staring us down were: Quicksilver (just wait for it), Sabertooth, Blob, Avalanche, Toad, and The Juggernaut; in other words, The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. You wouldn't believe how fast the team shifted into Speed Mode.

"Grant. Avalanche," I started. Take him out fast, we don't need any more earthquakes. Allyson. Mini-Sun. You can take out Toad, and maybe stall Sabertooth and Blob for a while, but it'll give me enough time to deal with Quicksilver. Grant, after you finish off Avalanche, work on Juggernaut. And believe me bro, you don't wanna hold anything back. Allyson and I will help out after we mop up the rest of the Brotherhood; sound good?"

They both nodded furiously (yeah I know it's only a simulation, but still), and took their positions. Grant and I charged the Brotherhood head on. Grant tackled Avalanche and started pounding on him before the Brotherhood could even blink, and I charged Quicksilver, who charged me back at the same speed. This time, I didn't waste any time on punches; I simply backhanded him across the face, and started running up the side of a skyscraper. I could feel Quicksilver following me, like I knew he would, and I waited until he was just a few feet away from me before I tapped into SMS (which was like so enhanced now, I could type a five page report in 3 seconds), turned around, and swept his legs out from under him. As he started falling, I jumped after him, and started wailing on him with lightning fists as we both free fell. Once we were close to the ground, I stopped beating him up briefly, so that I could blast him the rest of the way down with a lightning cannon (my version of a Kamehameha). Good thing that wasn't the real Quicksilver; he never would've walked, let alone run again. After I landed on the ground, I quickly caught my bearings. Allyson was hovering in the air, maintaining the mini-sun that, by the looks of it, had already incinerated Toad, and was keeping Blob and Sabertooth in a solar prison. No real earthquakes had happened yet, and by the looks of some familiar looking boots sticking out from a crater, there wouldn't be any. Although, based on the constant booms I heard in the distance, I was willing to bet that Grant and Juggernaut would do some earthshaking on their own.

"How you doing Allyson?!" I called up to her.

"Hanging in there!" she responded. "I already made fried frog legs, but Sabertooth and Blob refuse to burn!"

"Try going Super Sunbird! Blob can be knocked out, and I bet Super Sunbird has more than enough power to K.O. him! Leave Sabertooth to me!"

"Ok! give me a few secs, I gotta charge up!"

Allyson let her sun fizzle out, and Blob and Sabertooth crashed to the ground. I didn't waste a single second, and hit them with a Final Flash. Sabertooth was knocked into Blob, but unfortunately, Blob barely stumbled backwards. Sabertooth was pretty a bug on a windshield in an electric storm, but Blob managed to throw him away, and charge me head on. I didn't even need to shift into Speed Mode; I simply created a pair of shackles around his enormous ankles, and sidestepped as he crashed into the pavement. I created a thunderbolt and started whacking away at him, but I may as well have used a stick for all the good it was doing me. My Speed Sense triggered, but this time, it was picking up two threats. The more obvious one was Blob, who was reaching up to grab me. The other one however, was Sabertooth pouncing at me like a tiger. I phased through Blob, sidestepped Sabertooth's attack, and decapitated him on the spot; based on what I knew about him, he had come back from worse. Blob got up, and looked confused to find me on the opposite side of him, but before he could do anything about it, Allyson screamed really loud (we really gotta establish team earplugs one of these days), and glowed with the light of a supernova. Quicker than even I could follow, she landed in front of Blob, and i'm guessing she hit him for all she was worth, because he was rocketing into the air faster than a supersonic jet; plus, a lot of windows shattered for no apparent reason.

"You gonna stare at me all day Jason?" she asked me, snapping me out of my trance.

Her voice was different when she was in Super Sunbird, older and more powerful. It was like I was talking to Allyson's voice five extremely good years into the future.

"Umm, no," I managed to get out (smooth Jason). "Let's go find Grant, he probably needs our-"

Right on cue, a huge BOOM!, echoed through the air, and Grant fell through a hole in a skyscraper, and landed behind us, creating a huge crater. Allyson and I rushed over to check on him, but the guy was as tough as they came and was up in no time at all.

"Damn that guy is strong!" he said as he got up. "And damn Allyson, you are one bright chick!"

"Shut up Grant," she said. "We've got business to take care of."

Again, my Speed Sense triggered right on cue, and The Juggernaut came smashing through the skyscraper. We all managed to get out of the way of the guy (there was no stopping him once he got any momentum), and he crashed through a few buildings before managing to stop and turn around.

"Aerodynamics now!" Grant shouted.

I didn't hesitate, and slammed my fist into the pavement. A bolt of lightning erupted out of the ground, sending Juggernaut flying into the air, but that wasn't even the fun part. Grant and Allyson went beast on him, flying into the air, and just beating the living crap out of him in mid-air for like ten seconds before I summoned a mega lightning strike to blast him at least ten feet under. You could argue that it was reckless of me to summon lightning with my friends in such close proximity, but when the sky gets dark, and thunder starts to boom, they know what time it is (more importantly, they know to get the hell out the way). I figured Juggernaut would be down for the count, but he jumped out of the pavement rubble like a zombie.

"Guys!" I shouted up to them. "A good Delta Speed Thrasher would be welcome right about now!"

They immediately flew down, and we took our positions. Grant started pounding the guys chest with all of his strength, I went around to the back, created spiked fists, and started punching away, and Allyson kicked him in the face with a flying kick (which was way more effective in Super Sunbird), and took out his knees. Once he was down, we all ran around i'm, pushing furiously at anything we could get our knuckles to connect to. It was working for a second or two, but this guy was more durable than a thousand tanks. He suddenly rage quit, nearly getting the drop on me and Grant. But before he could try and gain any more leverage, Allyson took the reins. She uppercutted him as hard as she could, leaving cracks in the ground, and started wailing on Juggernaut as she kept flying upwards. Finally, she glowed really, really bright, and a second later, a huge energy wave, bigger than anything ever in the history of forever, erupted from her hands, and engulfed juggernaut in the massive golden death blaze. When it died down, the guy was nowhere in sight. Allyson flew back to Grant and I, sung a few verses of Beautiful Soul, and came down from Super Sunbird.

"What did you do to big and ugly?" I asked her.

"I didn't kill him," she said. "But I doubt I could've anyway. But yeah, he's in orbit right now, probably halfway to Mars."

I decided to take her word for it as S.E.R.A. set up level 4 for us. This time, $#!+ got real. I didn't realize it until just now, but that last battle between us and the brotherhood caused a lot of damage to the city; rubble was everywhere. That wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part, was when huge chunks of metal from the ground and the buildings started to float in mid-air, and throw themselves at us. I managed to get out of the way, while Allyson created a barrier around herself and Grant. Even without finding him, I already knew who was doing this, but I didn't have to look that hard to find him anyway. He was hovering in the air, wearing some type of red armor, and a red helmet with purple trimming. He was covered in an electromagnetic barrier (something I couldn't control), and was probably the oldest villain on earth. Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Magneto.

"Level 4," S.E.R.A. said. "Defeat Magneto within 10 minutes, before the airplane that he has under his control, full of innocent passengers, crashes into City Hall, which is now filled with senators pushing for Human and Mutant co-existence."

Ok, first of all, WOW! Training just got really dark all of a sudden. This time the team didn't even need to go into Speed Mode for a meeting of the minds. We were all on one mindset: get to Magneto, and punch him in the face. Hard. At first, it seemed like maybe we could do that. Weaving in and out of his metal barrages were easy enough, but the main problem was that purple lightning barrier. Grant managed to charge into it like a missile, and while it didn't do much (Grant got knocked in the chest with a bolt of lightning), it at least moved Magneto a few feet down, proving that the barrier was not impenetrable. Allyson and I tried breaking the barrier as well. I shot at it with a few missile constructs, lightning bolts, even summoned a mega lightning strike for good measure, but I barely made a dent in his force field; not to mention the fact that I was running around so much, I could barely stop to get a shot off (I may be faster, but using electricity blasts still puts a damper on my speed, plus it gets even lower if I use constructs). Allyson was faring a little better than me, even managing to hit Magneto's barrier with a giant sledgehammer construct, but she had to keep up a barrier of her own to keep the slabs of metal away from her. I realized that we were not gonna take this guy down as individuals; we had to put him down all at once.

"GUYS SPEED UP NOW!" I yelled.

They did, and we met in on the ground for one of my famous team meeting sessions.

"We have to strike at once," I told them. "We're wasting time trying to do our own thing, we have to finish it together."

"What do you have in mind?" Grant asked me.

"One combined shot," I said. I'll summon a lightning strike. Allyson, get directly under him, and hit him with the biggest power blast you got. Grant, get a flying start, come in really fast, and punch his barrier as hard as you can, then get out of the blast range."

We all agreed on my plan, and took our positions. I quickly got behind some cover, and focused on bringing the thunder. Allyson got under Magneto and started charging up her blast, and I could already hear Grant breaking the sound barrier. This plan didn't last a single second (we were that fast), we simply let our powers go, and hoped that we were in sync with each other. As it turns out, we were. As soon as my lightning strike hit, Allyson's power blast did; and Grant's speeding rocket punch was the icing on the cake. Magneto went down in a glorious explosion, and went rocketing through the air. I made the mistake of thinking that it was that easy to put him away, or that S.E.R.A. would underestimate us. Magneto rose into the air again; another barrier enveloping him. I was gonna tell the team to do the same plan all over again, but then we ran into a complication. A flash of light erupted in the ground, several feet from where we were, and after the light dissipated, we were staring down an army. They weren't regular people (as if), but I could classify them into four categories: ones that were burly like Brock Lesnar, ones that had glowing red eyes, and ones that were vibrating at super speed levels, and ones that were floating in the air. The army charged at us, and for the time being, Magneto became a side mission. The good news was that their powers were generic (super strength, super speed, flight, and laser vision), and each person only had one of each; plus, it stopped raining metal. The bad news was, we were outnumbered 1,000 to 3, and these were not robots. Grant rushed down, and together, we charged straight into the thick of things, while Allyson helped us with ranged blasts and various constructs. I created a Thunder Sword for myself, but Grant refused the one I made for him, saying that his fists were all he needed. Together, the two of us mowed down half of the oncoming force. The only real problem were the speedsters, and even they weren't that big of a deal. I silently thanked Allyson for the Kung-Fu training, because on top of being slower than me, these guys did not know how to fight, so mixing lightning and roundhouse kicks really did the trick. After Grant and I had punched kicked, and slashed down a good 200 of the goons, which took about five minutes total, Allyson yelled at us to get clear. After we did, a mini sun materialized in the middle of the remaining fighters, burning them all to cinders.

Before we could make a play for Magneto, another wave materialized, and I yelled for another team meeting.

"Is S.E.R.A. $#!++!ng us right now!" Grant exclaimed. "I mean seriously, how are we supposed to finish Magneto off when we gotta take all these goons down. Look, I can already see the plane!"

He was right, all you had to do was look in Magneto's general direction to see a huge white commercial airplane falling from the sky. We had wasted seven minutes trying to take Magneto down; time was running out. I started think frantically, using my big brain to think of any fast solutions to our problem. Then in a Jimmy Neutron 'brain blast' (no, I didn't say it), inspiration hit me.

"Allyson," I said. "Can you make a mini sun inside of Magneto's force field?"

"I tried, but his barrier is somehow blocking me from the inside," she said. "The most I could do is get a flash of flame inside before it dissipated."

"Still, it'll be hard to concentrate on maintaining a force field, when you get sprayed with golden fire. It'll leave him open for a second; Grant, how fast can you knock him out?"

"A second is more than enough," he said.

"Then let's do it," I said. "Allyson. Flare blast, Grant, knock him out, and get that plane to safety. Allyson, you and I are gonna do Avatar Beatdown on these grunts; they'll be like ants compared to us. Grant, if you hurry, you might be able to get a piece of the action."

"That's ok," he said. "I'll just make do with lifting a 400 ton plane, and saving hundreds, if not 1000+ people."

"Whatevs man," I said. "You guys ready?"

They nodded their heads, and I signaled Allyson to do her thing. Quicker than you normal people could blink, a flare of golden flame erupted inside of Magneto's shield, and the old geezer screamed like a little girl as he dropped his shield. Grant immediately charged at Magneto, plowing through all of the flyers that dared to get in his path, and punched Magneto in the face so hard, it sounded like ten cannons going off at the same time. Magneto flew though lots of buildings, and this time, did not get back up. Grant didn't waste a second, and took to the air to redirect the airplane. In the meantime, Allyson and I started phase three of my plan. I surged with power, and felt myself rise into the air. When the electricity settled, I was in my Avatar form, I 30 foot tall Thunder Spartan (Way Big seemed too childish). Allyson joined me shortly afterwards in an armored angel Avatar, and together we went to work. Honestly, we didn't really have to do much, except walk. I created a Thunder Spear to help me sweep the bad guys down, and Allyson created a Sun Sword to help with clean up, but we were just so overpowered that it didn't even matter. Over the course of 30 seconds, we walked slashed, and smacked away Magneto's forces until we were left with nobody else to play with. Grant on the other hand, simply took the plane by the bottom, and gently moved it to the edge of the water, where the people exited the plane safely. For the fifth, and final time, light flashed through the city, and we were introduced to a final challenge.

This time, it looked like S.E.R.A. was going for a terminator type of gimmick, because there were Doombots everywhere. The robots had us easily surrounded, but it looked like they had to wait for the signal to kill.

"Final Level," S.E.R.A. said. "Clear the city of Doombots in under 5 minutes, before their self-destruct programming commences, and obliterates the entire city; final villain will be introduced depending on the completion of the first stage."

In other words, we had to take out the small fries, until we got the big man's attention. S.E.R.A. started the simulation, and Allyson and I quickly put up barriers to block out the incoming laser barrage. We counted to three, unleashed a huge explosive wave (taking out the foundations of a few skyscrapers in the process), and started a really amped up version of plan Sector. We got three minutes through the plan before realizing two things. A: The robots were LITERALLY all over the city, and for those of you that are stupid, NYC is REALLY BIG. B: There was simply not enough of us to go around. Sure, Grant and I took out a few thousand Doombots together, but the simple fact was that we were facing down maybe millions of those things. Allyson simply couldn't defend a perimeter that was an entire city wide, unless she went Super Sunbird and nuked the city. She did go Super Sunbird, and try to manually take the Doombots down (she told me afterwards), but she simply didn't have enough energy to complete the job herself, although she did take out a little over 2/3rds of the robot army before having to come down. With a little under a minute left, I got a last-minute-save-the-team's-butt idea. I remembered yesterday, during the final exam when I made the robots go haywire and go boom. I sensed around for all of the electric energy in the area, and was taken aback when I felt the presence of over 10,000 Doombots still in the area. I concentrated on all of that energy, and commanded it to transfer over to me. It took a few seconds, but eventually I was able to drain every last Doombot of their power, and was nearly overcome, as the tidal wave of electricity flooded into my energy reserves. True, to her word, S.E.R.A. released the final boss battle, who conveniently enough was placed on top of the Empire State Building. Dr. Doom, from as far as I could see, was less impressive in person, or simulation. Sure, with his metal mask, green cloak, and Sith-Lord type of demeanor, I could see him being a big deal in show business, but as far as villains go, so far Venom took the cake for biggest and baddest. Anyway, Doom lifted his hand into the air, in a 'King of the World' type gesture, and the ground that was within 200 feet of the building bubbled with some type of red, clearly magical energy. Out of the ground, shot out thousands of demons from Hell. They went around the park as far as looks go. Some were horned with cloven hooves, others were humanish with scaly red skin,others were bat-like and flying, heck, some of them were 30 feet tall, carrying huge swords, and axes. Either way, it looked like S.E.R.A. wanted us to play a climbing game; the only problem was that I was having none of it. I lifted my hand up, waited for the right moment, and after a few thunder claps, a huge bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, hit Doom point blank, and ripped through the entire Empire State Building. If this was real life, this would cost taxpayers at least 100 million in property damage.

The demons took this as their cue to try and put up a fight, but Grant, Allyson, and I were not gonna lose to these punks. Grant took up my offer for a Thunder Blade, and as one, the team and I charged the demon army like there was no tomorrow. As a collective unit in speed combat, we did pretty good. Grant and I cut down a lot of small fries, but were ultimately focused on taking out the giants. In fact, after slashing down twenty of the runts, one of the giants tried to crush me with his axe. I simply avoided it, ran up his arm, and stabbed him in the head. As the three of us got closer and closer to the building, it became apparent to me that Doom still had some fight left in him. Most of the entrance to the Empire State Building was covered in a huge red barrier, which also happened to be spawning random demon types (seriously, how in the world do demons get fat?). It wouldn't be long until he showed himself, but I wasn't gonna give him the time to prepare for us.

"GRANT!" I called out to him as I took down another giant.

"WHAT?!" he called back.

"GIVE DOOM A LITTLE GIFT FROM ABOVE PRESENT!"

He looked up, and caught my drift. The bottom level of the building was covered in a barrier, which was diddly compared to a 100 story building that had a gaping chasm snaking down it's structure. Grant took to the air, and speed down the Empire State Building. Half a second later, a huge BOOM shook the ground, and the barrier fell.

"ALLYSON!" I called to her. "DELTA VORTEX NOW!"

Thankfully, she heard me, and a few feet to my right, I saw a swirling circle of golden flame start to materialize. I added my own power to the mix, creating a unique, and kind of cool looking blend of gold and blue. The vortex grew until it was 60 feet tall, and together, Allyson and I swept it back and forth, obliterating the remaining demons. After mopping up, Grant, who was carrying Doom's unconscious (or dead) body, walked out of the building triumphantly.

"Game Over!" he said pumping his fist, and giving Allyson and me fist bumps.

"Indeed Master Grant," S.E.R.A. said as her face reformed back in the sky. "Congratulations to you all, you have proven that you all posses teamwork skills and dynamics that will aid you in your future missions. Jason, you have shown to be a very skilled and effective leader, who is also wise enough to consider other options from teammates. Grant, you are undoubtedly the powerhouse of the group, yet you do well in bringing out the best in them, rather than trying to outshine and outdo them. Allyson, your immense power has proved to be a valuable asset to your teammates, as you can be both a buffer force, and a driving offensive force in your team's plans. I congratulate you all on your success; you are free to leave."

My body felt weird again, and half a second later, I found myself and the team back in 135X.

"Well," I said. "That was fun."

"No doubt," Grant said. "Dude, that was the best training session we've ever had as a team. Plus, if that's the true power of our future enemies, we got it all in the bag."

"Don't speak too soon hotshot," Allyson said. "Computer programs are way different from the real thing. But as far as preparation goes, I think we're pretty ok."

We all agreed on that, and decided to call it a day on training. I checked my watch, and was surprised to find out that it was only 11:30. Still, we decided to hit the lunch room early. Allyson didn't eat much today, and left after 25 minutes to go shower, leaving Grant and me alone. He eyed her heavily as she left, making me kind of uncomfortable, and then looked back to his food after she was out of sight. We ate in a bit of an awkward silence for five minutes before he said something else.

"Jason?" he said. "I'm gonna be straight up honest with you."

"You like Allyson?" I asked him nervously.

"What?!" he said reeling back while laughing at me. "Dude, no! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! I just-, I mean-."

For the next minute and a half, he laughed like a clown, nearly breaking the table while banging on it.

"Jason no!" he said as he composed himself. "Don't get me wrong, Allyson's a good girl, but i'm more a bachelor type of guy, trust me, i'm no good for her."

"Then what are you trying to tell me?" I asked him.

"I'm trying to tell you that you are doing this all wrong. You don't get girls to like you by hitting them in the face and yelling at them, unless they're into that sort of stuff."

"Wait a minute, I don't… and she doesn't-"

"Dude, I can see the two of you together from a mile away. And for the record, she doesn't hate you. Sure, she doesn't understand you, and she's a bit afraid of you, but i've talked with her quite a bit yesterday, and believe me, she's crushing on you hard bro."

"Sure doesn't feel like it. She barely talks to me unless she has to, plus she said so herself, she's not into brutes."

"You're not a brute, you just got pissed off and she saw the wrong you, at the wrong time. Now what we have here is a simple misunderstanding, and I can't stand to see two clueless people suffer, so i'm gonna do you both a favor, and make you two work out this little spat you got going on."

"Well thanks, I guess. But why don't you like her."

"Like I said, she's a good girl, i'm not a good guy. There's a reason why i'm a bachelor Jason, i've done a lot of bad things to a lot of good girls, i'm trying to be a better person now, but for a lot of girls' own good, i'm off the market for a little bit. I'm only available for flirting, cuddling, and making out."

"So, friends with benefits?"

"Don't judge me, I have needs."

We both laughed for a bit. I was gonna tell Grant how much it meant to me for stepping in to help me solve my little issue, and how much I respected him for his decision to lay off of girls until he was ready. In my opinion, admitting IS the sign of readiness, or at least the start of it. However, before I could get the words out of my mouth, a SUPER LOUD alarm started blaring through the intercoms, and before I could figure out what was going on, I felt my body being transported somewhere else.


	11. Chapter 11: Day Of The Dead

**Chapter 11:Day Of The Dead**

When I could see again, Grant and I were in some kind of war room. It wasn't like the usual meeting room where Fury assigned us missions and stuff, this place was fully loaded. Seriously, there were weapons everywhere. From missiles, to plasma rifles, grenades, drones, knives, swords, whatever. All of this stuff would've impressed, and even scared me, considering the fact that Fury never would've brought us to this room unless we were about to do some type of Call of Duty $#!+; but there was another sight that caught my eye, and almost made me forget about the war room altogether. Apparently, Allyson had just gotten done showering, because she was dressed in a pink bathrobe, and her hair was still wet and stringy. Her face was nothing short of shocked and devastated; this was clearly the most embarrassing moment of her life. You gotta believe me when I say, it took every ounce of my concentration and willpower not to bust out laughing at her, and I could tell Grant was thinking the same thing. But considering where we were, and the people sitting at the opposite end of us, I decided to keep my composure; this was obviously a few steps up from our average mission briefing. I say this because, at the opposite end of the table, Fury, Kennedy, Maria Hill, Ms. Marvel (glad to see she was ok), Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, and Quicksilver (relieved to see him up and about), were assembled in a U shape, around the huge, fluorescent, and rectangular meeting table, that was like ten feet long and wide. All of their faces were grim and serious (even by S.H.I.E.L.D. standards); something big was going down, but before I had time to ask what it was, Fury answered the question.

"We have an urgent situation," he said.

"You found another stone?" I guessed.

"If only we 'found' it," he responded. "This time, it looks like the stone found us."

He took out his clicker (that thing must have been universal), pointed it toward the meeting table, and pressed a button. The table glowed bright blue and purple, and a huge holographic landscape, dotted with wheat fields, tractors, and barns, popped up like dominoes falling in reverse. After the wheat field was finished, it was covered in a huge purple layer. I could see thousands upon thousands of purple mini people marching across the wheat field like an army. As they marched, a huge purple aura, that stretched from the sky to the ground, followed them like a plague. And at the beginning of the army's base point, a huge purple sphere glowed like a burning lamp, spawning thousands of new mini people every 30 seconds. It didn't take a genius to figure out what this was about.

"A few moments ago," Fury continued. "Our EM sensor just picked up a huge, and I mean so huge that it overloaded the system and shut it down, power level burning in the urban area of Scott City, Kansas."

"We goin to Kansas?" Grant asked. "Laaame!"

I punched him in the arm and gestured to Fury to go on.

"We zoomed in on it's last known coordinates," he said. "And found the stone residing in Kansas' biggest wheat field; only now, it seems like wheat is the last thing that field is producing right now."

"What are those things?" I asked him.

"Not alive," he responded. "From what our satellites have picked up, these things are more or less zombies of sort, which means we're dealing with the stone of Hades. This undead army is creating some kind of aura that is killing anything that lives; take a look."

He pressed another button on his clicker, and a picture frame of a huge wheat field popped up above the hologram stuff. From what I could tell, this was some sort of satellite image that got zoomed in by 1,000 or so. It showed a huge golden field of wheat, but every second, a wave of black spread over the field. In other words, the stone reeked of death itself, and it was on a rampage in one of the biggest farming states. I guess I should care about that, but farming really was not my thing, if anything else I was more worried about the city than the wheat.

"Ok," said Allyson, who was clinging to her robe for dear life. "This is really menacing and serious and all, but can someone get me some clothes please?"

For the first time in probably her whole life, the whole of everyone in the room pretended not to hear her, and continued on with the task at hand.

"You have to get that stone," Fury said. "At their current position and speed, the zombies will flood into the nearest populated area within three hours. The devastation they could cause will be unfathomable, if it wasn't for the fact that they're headed for a relatively small town. But if Doom gets his hands on that stone, there's no telling what kind of monstrosity he could unleash."

"But how are we supposed to get near the stone?" I asked him. "That death aura will eat us alive."

"No it won't. Based off of what we've observed, the aura is entirely magical. We're not certain as to what effects it may have on your powers, but you should be able to get within range without worrying about withering up."

"Ummm," Grant jumped in. "You see, it's not that the confirmation doesn't relieve me, but I think you forgot to account for the fact that there are still thousands and thousands of zombies, that the three, again, THE THREE of us have to fight. Even with our powers we can't hold off an army that size on our own, what are we gonna do?"

"I'm surprised at you Grant," Fury chided him. "And here I thought you were my go to guy for inspiration."

"Just saying, in the Amazon, it was us against a few thousand. Now, it's way more than we can take alone."

"Duly noted. Which is why you won't be fighting this battle alone."

Grant, Allyson, and I shot him and each other inquisitive looks; then Mrs. Kennedy stepped in to shed some light on Fury's words. She pressed some buttons on her end of the table (because apparently, it was the world's biggest iPad), and the Walking Dead diagram shrunk, and hovered several feet above the surface of the table. Mrs. Kennedy pressed a few more buttons, and a new battlesuit diagram popped up. The suit was similar to the ones the team used, but these ones were a lot bulkier, had Halo style helmets, and were equipped with: Gatling guns on the wrists, assault rifles strapped to the backs, and was stocked with some kind of laser sword (no, not a lightsaber, it was actually shaped like a sword) and riot shield. The gear looked pretty bad ass, but it wasn't really my style.

"So you're gonna give us an upgrade?" Grant asked her. "Again, not trying to be ungrateful, but a new suit, no matter how fully loaded, except may be Iron Man's, is gonna turn the tide against this Zombocalypse."

"Well then," Mrs. Kennedy said. "What if I told you that these suits weren't for you, but for 1,000 of your personal soldiers."

"Come again?" I asked her, because 'personal army' sounded really good right about now.

"You heard me." Mrs. Kennedy continued. "After the Brotherhood's latest attack on Washington, these suits became standard issue for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s defensive inventory. They're made from the same material as your battle suits, but come with fully loaded, arc reactor powered energy weapons, that are self sustainable. The suits come with a small energy reserve, used to power body shields, that can withstand blows from tanks, missiles, and high caliber gunshots. I've re-routed the power usage, so that it acts like a buffer force against the death aura's corroding effects; the suits should be able to last two hours in the field before the shield runs out of juice, although the users will be more vulnerable to physical attacks. We have over 1,000 in storage, each encoded to respond to one S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; for threats like this, we've assembled every active operative we were able to get our hands on, including your trainers."

So long story short, S.H.I.E.L.D. was squaddin up for a turf war; this job was starting to get interesting.

"Ok," I said. "Better, but still, we're gonna need way more firepower than that."

"Then look around Jason," Fury said. "This is the defense weapons hangar for S.H.I.E.L.D. We have firepower galore."

He pressed another button on the clicker, and the table flashed holograms of a bunch of weapon diagrams. He left me and the team to study the weapon designs (which only took half a sec to read), and then we resumed our 'overcoming impossible odds' meeting. Long story short, most of the weaponry that was in the hangar, was drone based. There were flying drones, capable of shooting high pressure caliber energy bullets. Tank drones, capable of shooting energy bombshells, and cannon-like devices that shot pods into the air, and basically scatter shot bullets everywhere in enemy territory. With weapons like these, we stood a small chance; then again, everything good was small when we were involved.

"So, what's the plan Mr. Fuller?" Fury asked me.

"What do you mean?" I asked him back.

"You have full access and authority over the strike team that will combat this threat. We don't have a lot of time, I need to know how you plan to lead your soldiers in this battle."

My heart started pounding really hard. I silently knew it would come to this, but I was praying it wouldn't come to this. Leading Grant and Allyson on small knit team missions was one thing; leading a thousand people into a battle, and being responsible for all of their lives, that was a whole new ball game.

"_Ok focus," _I thought to myself. "_You can do this, you HAVE to do this."_

I took a deep breath, and told Grant and Allyson to speed up with me as we tried to figure out a plan.

"So what you got cookin up in there Jason?" Grant asked me. "What's the game plan?"

I was still deep in thought, thinking of every possible way my plans could fail, and blow up in my face, so Allyson rushed in to fill the awkward silence.

"The best thing for everyone is for me to create a sun in the middle of the army," she said. "I can take them down by the hundreds, and thin out their ranks."

"That can be Plan A," I said, finally getting my old creativity back. "But like Fury said, the aura might have some sort of effect on our powers; we need to plan for the worst, but hope for the best."

"So what do you think we should do?" Allyson asked me.

"We start out with range. Hopefully, the aura won't affect our powers. If that's the case, I summon heavy lightning, while you focus on incinerating as many of those undead freaks as you can. Assuming that doesn't hold them back for too long, we use the pod shooters, and scatter shoot the living mess out of em'. We keep doing that until we run out of ammo; between the ten shooters we have available, that'll take out at least a good 10,000 of the suckers."

"But they're zombies dude," Grant protested. "Unless those things can automatically head shot, bullets will only slow them down at best."

That may sound stupid to you, assuming that we had no confirmation that the creatures were zombies, but Grant raised a valid point; for the most part, we didn't know $#!+ about whether or not our weapons could harm them.

"We gotta hope that won't be the case," I told Grant. "Besides, if it comes to that, we'll have to do a lot of head trimming."

"Fair enough," he said. "But even then, that won't hold em' back for long. What do we do when they start getting closer."

"That's when we should bust out the tanks and Gatling guns," Allyson immediately responded (did she pull rank or something all of a sudden?). "Use then close range to take out more of the attackers, and create a temporary buffer shield while we get ready to counter charge them."

"That's good," Grant said. "But a counter charge? Seriously? Even if by some miracle, our plan works, we'd still be facing down at least 10,000 zombies at best; what then?"

"We charge them back," I said.

That earned me two very surprised and 'have you gone nuts?' looks from Allyson and Grant.

"Seriously," I continued. "Between the three of us, if we use our speed, we can thin out the ranks even further. We can cut a path through the head of the charging force, and get in deep within their ranks to cut them down from the inside. The other soldiers can handle the foremost enemies, they'll be softened up anyway."

"You really think the three of us can manage that?" Allyson asked me.

"Four of us," I responded. "I mean Quicksilver and the others are gonna help us, right?"

"Depends if they get a suit."

"Hold up," Grant said. "Let's just slow down and ask them."

We did, and Grant asked whether or not our trainers would be getting a suit.

"Of course," said Mrs. Kennedy. "We need all the help we can get, i'll be down in the field with you as well, plus we're recruiting as many heroes as we can get our hands on to help out."

"Ok, thanks," said Grant. "Just checking, the plans are going great by the way, we're really brainstorming here, see you in half a sec once were finished."

We sped up, and resumed our war meeting.

"Ok," I said. "Now that we got that out of the way...yeah, the four of us will rush the bulk of the army, thin it out, and collapse it's infrastructure. If all goes accordingly, we should be able to make their defense collapse from the inside out, and we'll have the stone in no time. You all cool with that plan?"

"Yeah," Grant said. "I'm on board."

"Same here," said Allyson. "You ok Jason? You don't look so good."

I realized I was letting my fear shine through. I couldn't afford to look weak in front of my team, charismatic or not, I was the face of the team, and I had to present it well.

"Yeah," I said, adjusting my face to make the lie more convincing. "Just a little nervous is all, no big deal."

I could tell that Grant and Allyson weren't completely convinced, but they didn't have a choice but to believe me. We slowed down, gathered our thoughts together, and with a little help from them, I explained the battle plan to Fury and the hero crew. They didn't look overly enthusiastic about my plan, but after a few minutes of debating and talking in circles, we pretty much agreed that most of this plan depended on the success of sheer dumb luck.

"And you're sure you're ready for this Mr. Fuller?" Fury asked me.

"As i'll ever be," I responded.

"Estimated casualties?"

"Maybe 200 or so, assuming my plan doesn't go accordingly; besides, it's not like we can retreat or anything."

"Are you prepared to deal with that?"

That was a double question. Not only was he asking me if I was ready to take responsibility for the deaths of those that would be involved in this fight; he was asking me if I was ready to stand and die if it came to that.

"I am," I said after a brief pause. "We all are."

I looked over at Grant, who looked as determined as ever to fight; there was no question of whether or not he was brave enough to die for thousands of people he didn't know. I looked over at Allyson too, who surprisingly enough looked just as determined as Grant. Seeing their faces filled me with renewed drive and focus; nobody would be dying today.

"Ok then," said Fury. "Call in the rest of the agents, and let's get this party-"

"HOLD, COLONEL FURY!" a voice straight up boomed through the entire hangar, probably taking half of my ear drums with it.

A second later, a huge flash of light burned in the air to the right of the table, and when the light died down, Dr. Strange was in the room. He was dressed in something blue, that looked like a mix between pajamas, and a robe for monks. He had a kind of cool red cape draped around his back, and some weird looking amulet around his neck. The guy definitely had a professor type look to him, what with his grey streaks in his hair and what not. Of course, he ruined all of that by just happening to be levitating 10 feet in the air, and having glowing white eyes like he was the Avatar (Last Airbender, not the blue people).

"Hold," he said again in a voice that didn't shatter my hearing. "Your plans, no matter how elaborate and tactical, will fall apart as soon as you deploy your forces."

"And why is that Stephen?" Fury asked him. "As far as I can tell, all we need to do is blow the damn things back to hell, get the stone and be done with it."

"It is not that simple Colonel. These creatures you see, are a portion of the unredeemed souls that have been rotting in the depths of Hades for the last five thousand years. Over time, these souls have fed off of the sins and malice that have dammed them to rot; their collective evil is strong enough to rot away any organic life form not properly defended, and even your greatest weapons will be overall ineffective against them."

"So that's it?!" I shouted. "We just give up and let those things destroy the city?!"

"Hold your tongue, Jason Thaddeus Fuller," he said. "There is still hope, but we must act swiftly."

I was still reeling from the fact that he knew my full name (not that big a deal but still, I didn't tell him), so he had my undivided attention. He waved his hand through the air behind him, and after a brief flash of yellow, he was surrounded by backup. There were five of them, each with a different look. One of them was a tall white guy with long brown hair, wearing animal fur, and carrying a staff made of tree bark, with an aura of small green animals, like a lion, rhino, and cheetah, scampering around it. Another was some bald Chinese guy, wearing a green and yellow shaolin robe. I would've laughed at him, but considering the fact that he was in league with Dr. Strange, plus the fact that he had two katanas strapped to his back, I decided to lay off of him. There were two women with the magic crew. Both of them were tall, black, and from what I could see, identical twins. They were both wearing red robes with hoods that covered their heads. Over the robes, they were wearing red breastplates, combat boots, and armor greaves. They didn't talk, move, or look interested in anything; so why did they scare me the most? Dr. Strange introduced them to us in order. The wild man was named Zachery, and he specialized in animal and nature magic. The bald Chinese guy was named Wong, and while he had no magic powers, he could still whip some ass with his swords, so he was still useful. Finally, the twins were named Azaria and Abimbola. They specialized in blood magic, using their blood as an energy source to create anything they could imagine, or use it like magma to melt through their opponents. They didn't talk, or look interested, because apparently, they were cursed by some demon, whose name I can't pronounce. As such, they've had to constantly remain emotionless and silent, because if they felt anger, their blood would start to boil, and they would have no choice but to spew it out. If they felt sadness, they could freeze the blood in the veins of anyone who surrounded them, and if they felt annoyance, there's no telling what could happen to you. Also, happiness was out of the question; the demon took away their ability to feel that. Anyway, after Dr. Strange had introduced us to his magic crew, he instructed Fury to do the same, and call in the available backup we had coming. Fury pulled out a walkie talkie looking thing, pressed a button, and spoke into it.

"This is an emergency call to all meta-humans available for combat" he said. "Respond to coordinates SNN-Alpha 6 on the double."

It took a few seconds, but after a while, a ripple of light flashed to the left of the table, and our backup crew arrived. As far as backup was concerned, we could've done worse. Most of the guys weren't heavy hitters, but as you can tell, we needed any and all help we could get our hands on; anyone who showed up was an automatic MVP. There were only ten heroes that responded; Wolverine, Daredevil, Rogue, Psylocke, Angel, Falcon, Spider-Man, Gambit, Black Panther, and War Machine. Still, they were as welcome as The Avengers would be. With everyone assembled and ready (Grant trying not to look like a fanboy, and Allyson trying to be invisible), Dr. Strange started the second half of his lecture.

"Friends and comrades," he started. "Your arrival is most fortuitous, for today, the world needs your protection like never before."

He thrusted his hand into the air, and a real time projection of the zombie army materialized. Up close, they were really hard to look at. Each of them were roughly around 6 feet tall, with grey pasty skin that looked like it was infused with gravel and dried magma. They were glowing with purple energy, actually frothing the stuff from their mouths, and they all had long purple talons, that looked sharp enough to carve a tank like a Christmas ham. To prove my point, one of the creatures, who stumbled upon a tractor, picked it up like it was a softball, and started shredding it to pieces before moving on with the pack. Apparently, the local police force was trying to make a stand. 100 meters south of the army, was a barricade of police cars and trucks. Dozens of officers opened fire on the army, but from what I could see, the bullets didn't even prick the zombies, but it sure as hell made them mad. The ones in the front started to charge; the scene was 1000X more scary than the zombies from I Am Legend. I started to turn my head away, I didn't wanna see what those things were gonna do to those poor stupidly brave officers. Fortunately, I didn't have to. The twins lifted their heads, revealing their glowing blood red eyes. They started waving their hands in sync, saying words that I couldn't begin to understand. A few seconds later, they thrusted their arms forward, and right before the zombies tore through the cops, a red wall, that looked like it was made of glowing red water, rushed in front of the cops. The sisters made a pushing movement, and the wall of glowing blood started to push the zombies back; the sight of it was both impressive and disgusting to watch at the same time (I could actually hear Allyson baby barf in her mouth). Dr. Strange had pretty much seen that we had gotten the picture, and moved on with his speech, but left the projection on display.

"What you have just witnessed," he continued. "Is a direct response from the awakening of the stone of Hades. A few days ago, Dr. Doom and his cohorts went on a brutal rampage, killing hundreds of innocents to obtain five of the seven Stones Of Olympus. Once, I was wise to his schemes, I released a chaos wave on the earth, with intentions to scatter the stones, and prevent Doom from obtaining their incredible and destructive power. As such, the three youngsters you see before you, have been working tirelessly to find and obtain the stones; they have already secured the stone of Ares. Now the stone of Hades has awoken, and it is only through our collective might that we might be able to stop it from spreading it's aura of death throughout the entire world. I have already placed a containing enchantment on the stone; making it's magic double back on itself, and slow down the uprising of more damned souls. However, the enchantment will weaken and break within a little over an hour at best; if that happens, millions of the dead will pour into the world like a flood. We must act swiftly."

He levitated into the air, got into a meditating stance, and started chanting. Weird looking symbols started to envelope him in a weird looking sphere, and after a few seconds, he shouted at the top of his lungs: BY THE HOLY WATERS OF EDEN! I felt a huge wave pass through me, and when I looked up, I saw remnants of a blue shock wave making it's way through the room, and though the wall; the shock wave probably spread throughout the entire Helicarrier. I looked at myself, trying to see if I looked any different, but I was just fine. I used my sensory abilities to scan my body, and found to my surprise, that I was covered in some kind of invisible aura. It was different from my magic shield aura, in fact, it kinda blended into it; like my aura knew this new sensation meant me no harm. I looked around at everyone else, and saw to my relief that everyone was ok; although by the looks they were giving Dr. Strange, he had some fast talking to do.

"Do not worry yourselves my friends," he calmingly said. "The spell I have just performed is a warding spell, turned offensive. You see, normal, and not even magical weapons will be enough to fell these unholy beasts; they are fueled by millennia of sin, hate, and suffering. The only thing that could possibly vanquish such evil, is weapons blessed by the Holy Waters of Eden,heavenly water that has been prayed over, and blessed by St. Michael, Archangel of God, himself. The water has been etched into the very fabric of your being, the ship's structure, as well as all of the weapons it is carrying; in other words, we now stand a chance against the stone of Hades; or at least the products of it's magic."

The rest of the heroes weren't exactly thrilled that they had been sprayed with heavenly zombie repellent, but they quickly got over it, considering the fact that we were outnumbered, and needed all the help we could get.

"Well thanks for that Doc," said Fury. "We all appreciate the extra protection, but like you said, time is short. I'll call in the rest of my forces, and we'll finally get this party-"

"WAIT!" Allyson screamed, with a really panicked look on her face. "BEFORE WE FILL THIS PLACE UP WITH MORE PEOPLE, SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET ME SOME CLOTHES RIGHT NOW!"

It took the collective willpower of everyone in the room not to laugh at her, and even then, a few sniggers got loose. Anyway, Dr. Strange waved his hands, and Allyson was suddenly wearing some weird looking all white PJs, that were made from some type of weird cotton. Not much in fashion, but from the look of relief on Allyson's face, you'd think she had just gotten a free set of designer clothes. After we had managed to shut the drama queen up (never let her know I called her that), Fury called in the rest of the troops, over 1,000 agents, and we went to work.

Setup took about 30 minutes in total. The first 10 were spent on bringing the agents and heroes up to speed on my plan of attack. At first, they weren't really receptive of the idea of taking orders from the 11th graders, but after having S.E.R.A. show them some scenes from our simulation exercise (especially the part where I blasted a hole straight through the Empire State Building), they got the memo that underestimating us was not the best thing to do. After getting everyone up to speed, we all got dressed for war. Grant, Allyson, and I morphed (causing everyone within sight to laugh at us), and Mrs. Kennedy brought us up to speed on the new upgrades she put into our battle suits and weapons. Apparently, Allyson was a pro at using throwing knives (and she never thought at anytime this information might be useful for Grant and I to know), so Mrs. Kennedy stocked her suit with 20 of em; each able to be charged up and used like a grenade, and of course, automatically returnable. Grant wasn't lying when he said he was fully loaded with awesome, improved gear. He summoned his axe for me and showed me the new features. For starters, the thing weighed at least 500 pounds. Furthermore, Grant got the idea that combining a sword and axe into one weapon is cool, because when he willed it, his axe shot out a three foot blade, retracted the axe blades in just a bit, and became a really big sword. It would've looked awkward, considering the fact that the axe blades should've been too big for the blade to hit anything, but like I said, the blades retracted. What he had was a bigger than usual hilt guard, but not so big to where the actual blade was pointless. Of course, he could convert the sword axe into a spear as well, so yeah. And still, it got better…or worse, whichever you deem it. Grant retracted his sword, flung his axe out, and the head fell off of the handle, hanging by a chain that was somehow buried in it. Basically, Grant was carrying the world's most deadly flail ever. Finally, as if he actually needed more weapons, Mrs. Kennedy had a sword taken off of the training rack (the dull ones), and had it sharpened and calibrated for Grant's battle suit. It was wicked looking, like 'Conan The Barbarian' wicked looking; so apparently he was serious about the dual wielding thing…whatever, so long as it kept him alive. Finally, Mrs. Kennedy upgraded my Kevlar interior, to where it was now generating 2,000 volts of juice into my system. Just like Allyson, this was overkill, now that I could produce and store an unlimited amount of voltage in my body; but then again, I didn't have a year to build up my reserves, so this upgrade was much appreciated. Mrs. Kennedy also upgraded my shield (the one I haven't even used yet). Now, it was synced to my electric powers. It was able to hold, maintain, and amplify a charge, meaning if I wanted to, I could give my opponent a nice shock surprise when he (or she) hit it. Also, the outer rim of the shield was sharpened; as long as I kept the shield charged with voltage, the outer rim could slice through a full grown oak tree with no problem at all. Finally, because having a shield means Captain America has to be involved in some way, Mrs. Kennedy rigged my shield to be able to be thrown, controlled from a distance, and called back to my hand. Again, not to sound ungrateful…oh who am I kidding, this was sweet (Cap would be jealous)! I summoned my shield, to take a look at it and get accustomed to it's weight. Just like I thought, it weighed almost nothing; Vibranium and Adamantium are surprisingly light. More than that, the front had the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem plastered on it, like Captain America sold out and became an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I found it ironic that a shield would have the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem on it, but then again, everything in this place, even my clothes couldn't escape it's brand. Lastly (and this really is the last part of the upgrades), Mrs. Kennedy gave us all a new fashion accessory. I didn't notice it at first, but when I turned to look at Grant, a domino mask, in a rough shape of a bat, was covering his eyes, and most of his cheekbones. I checked to see if Allyson had one, and sure enough, she did.

"Thanks for the new upgrades," I told Mrs. Kennedy though my communicator. "But what's with the masks? Are we really gonna need them? I thought we were more of a hit a run type of crew."

"First of all," she responded. "You're welcome; I also installed an emergency evacuation transport function to your communicators. Please try not to break my stuff. Second, yes, you do need them. You got lucky with Venom, and managed to bring him in for detainment. But what if any of your enemies see your faces? Believe me when I tell you that they can and will find out who you are, and use that against you. These masks do the obvious, and conceal your faces, but I installed a neat little trick in them for extra security. Each of them emit a small frequency that will make your faces blurred to anyone not wearing them. Right now they're off, but once outside the Helicarrier, the masks will automatically jump online. The sensation will fill a bit ticklish to your faces, but you'll get used to the feeling."

I wasn't to thrilled about the masks. I mean they did make us look cooler, and more legit and all, but I dunno. Heck, the only real reason I didn't complain, was because of the whole 'real identity thing'; i'd never forgive myself if something happened to my mom because of this whole hero thing. In the last 10 minutes that it took to get everybody suited up, and the weapons ready for battle, Grant did the thing I dreaded him doing, and went total fanboy.

"Uhh, Dr. Strange?" he asked him as he cautiously approached. "Not to bother you or anything, but-"

"You want my autograph," the doctor cut him off.

I thought he was gonna politely tell him to %^(# off, or blast him with magic, but surprisingly enough, he did the opposite. Dr. Strange reached into the air in front of him, and after his hand had pretty much disappeared into some type of small dimension, he pulled his hand back. In it, was this huge, dictionary type book, with elaborate designs, a golden spine that was bedazzled with gems that were probably real, and had the word 'Autographs' plastered on it's cover in big shiny letters. Dr. Strange opened the book, which had nothing but blank pages in them, and summoned a pen out of thin air. Before the pen even touched the book, the first page flashed, and instead of a blank page, it was now an extremely well drawn (or taken), and actually moving photograph (like Harry Potter pictures), of Dr. Strange doing some mystical stuff with his glowing white eyes. Dr. Strange signed the picture, the ink looking like liquid diamond, and gave the book and pen to Grant.

"The book will do the same for any and all autographs you wish to acquire," Dr. Strange said plainly. "And do not fear losing it or the pen, they are magic, and will return to your possession when you have need of them; take care Mr. Jackson."

Grant looked at the book like it was worth a million dollars. He looked up at me, and then looked around at the room full of heroes; the guy was a kid in a candy store.

"_Go ahead," _I thought to him. "_Just try not make them hate you."_

Grant dashed towards the nearest hero he could spot (Wolverine), and began his quest for ultimate fanboy ship. With Grant out on nerd patrol, I decided to do a bit of hero searching myself, before it was time for battle. I looked around the room, searching for Ms. Marvel and Quicksilver. It only took a minute to find Ms. Marvel, who was chilling beside Storm, and getting used to her battle suit.

"Hey Ms. Marvel?" I said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure Thunder Man," she shrugged (how'd she know my code name?)" "What's up?"

"It's about the other day in the training room. I'm sorry I blasted you so hard, I didn't mean it, it was more or less of a reflex. But I am really sorry I hurt you so bad."

I expected her to give me a curt and polite thanks, or at least go off on me for being so reckless. Instead, she simply smiled, and started laughing at me (which was way worse).

"What's so funny?" I asked her, trying not to sound confrontational.

"N-Nothing," she said, trying to get a hold of herself. "It's just, I was never in any danger to begin with. One of my powers is energy absorption, what you did the other day was overload my powers, and temporarily shut them down, but I was never in any serious trouble kid; however your apology, though unnecessary, is duly noted and appreciated."

To many questions arose from that response, like, if she was never in danger, why did she go all supernova and almost send me crashing through the walls? I decided it was better not to ask questions, and moved on to locating Quicksilver; besides, I could see Grant coming in from the left, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out what he was coming here for. It only took a few seconds to find Quicksilver (the hair was a dead give away).

"Hey Quicksilver," I said as I approached him. "About the other day, I just wanted to-"

He held up a hand, sat up straight in his chair, and stared me down.

"Don't ever apologize for strength," he said bluntly. "It makes you unworthy of it. What happened in that fight was the result of basic evolution; the strongest will always prevail, so don't ever be ashamed of the power that courses through your very veins."

"Uhh, thanks," I said, not sure about whether or not I was off the hook. "Also, thanks for the energy bar, it really hit the spot."

"No problem, I got a million of em'. By the way, when i'm off duty, you can call me Pietro, you've earned the right. Hit me up whenever when you wanna train, you may have beaten me, but you still got a lot to learn about the true potential of being a speedster, your friends too. Now go get ready for the battle kid, may be when the circumstances are less dire, we can run a few laps around the world together; don't worry, it's easier than it sounds."

I decided it was better for my sanity to not wonder what that meant, and just shook his hand. Finally, with five minutes left before it was time for the show, I sent a shout out to my team.

"_Yo, Grant, Allyson," _I thought to them. "_You guys ready?"_

"_You know it Thunder Man!" _Grant shouted in my head. "_Just give me a sec, i'm getting Daredevil's autograph."_

"_I'm warming up with a few practice dummies," _Allyson responded. "_I'll meet up with you guys at the loading bay."_

I was going to take her word for it and let her be, but I found myself seeking her out. It didn't take anytime at all to find her, especially since I used my electric energy detector (i'll call it Thunder Sense), to single her out. She was in a small corner of the room, about ten meters away from some poorly constructed target dummies. She was practicing using her throwing knives, and I gotta tell you, she was killing it. Every throw either landed dead center in the chest, head, eyes, shoulder sockets, etc. Her face was so fierce and determined, that I knew all of those hits were entirely skill; no luck was involved whatsoever. I watched her for a minute before clapping my hands slow, like an evil genius, and making my presence mysteriously known.

"Thought I told you to leave me be," Allyson said, not at all surprised to see me.

"Thought you were raised in Alabama," I responded. "Not District 2."

"Funny, so what do you want?"

"Just waiting around. With Grant all out playing fanboy, you're the only other person I can talk to."

Her face flashed from annoyance, to light sympathy.

"You're nervous too, aren't you?" she asked me.

"Not so much about the battle," I responded. "But ever since I woke up this morning, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that something bad was gonna happen; this zombie stuff is only the tip of the iceberg, I just know it."

"Hey, don't get so clouded in the head Jason. Whatever it is, we've proven that we can overcome anything. Besides, as long you, Grant, and I are a team, what's the worst that could happen?"

That statement was so ludicrous, and so stupidly optimistic, I couldn't even begin to tell you what was wrong with it. Still, I thanked Allyson for the moral support, and she sat down next to me, to take a breather until the army was ready for deployment.

When that time came, it was not a peaceful, or for that matter, subtle. Fury's voice simply said: 'Strike Team, prepare for departure' over the intercom, and everyone who fit that description was whisked away in a flash of light before having the time to soak all of that in. When I could see straight again, I found myself side-by-side with Grant and Allyson, in some kind of empty airplane hangar-like room. Next to them, on either side, were the rest of the heroes that we had managed to scrounge up for this last minute operation. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear we were a seasoned team of veterans (technically, THEY were, but not the point). Still, that wasn't the best part. Using my Thunder Sense, I could feel every living agent armed in their battlesuit, as well as the massive tanks, and various other war machines ready for decimating. At our disposal, we had: 10 pod shooters, 20 tanks, 50 aerial drones, and 1,000 S.H.I.E.L.D. agents; not to mention the minor hero support we had going on. All in all, I liked our odds, even if they were slightly on the wrong end. Dr. Strange waved his hand outward, and a circular glyph that looked like a mystical fine china bowl, flashed outward, through the Helicarrier, and then came back like a boomerang a few seconds later. After my eyes readjusted from the flash, I quickly took in my bearings.

12:41 P.M. December 15, 2014, Vulgamore Family Farms, Scott City, Kansas

The entire strike team was in the middle, or should I say, near the edge of the huge wheat field that the zombie army (who were still trapped behind the blood fortress), was. Ok, three things right off the bat. First, this was the biggest wheat field I had ever seen. Sure, that doesn't mean much coming from a city kid, who's never seen a farm in his life, but still, this was definitely a main contender, I mean the place was just rolling hills upon hills of golden, soon to be dead wheat. Second, it was really freaking dark and sinister out here. The holograms didn't show it that well, but there were really thick storm clouds in the air, the sky looked like night when it was noon, not to mention the howling winds that made it difficult to hear anything without a communicator or a psychic link. Third, the strike team was not in the best condition for an attack; in fact, we were a lot worse off than we thought. Apparently, the spell that Dr. Strange had placed on the stone was starting to slowly unravel, and the stone was making up for lost time; basically hurling up more dead flunkies by the hundreds. Now, like I said, I can use 100% of my brain, so everything i'm about to tell you is about 97.3% accurate. This wheat field was a 30,000 acre square. Convert that to miles, and that's about 46.8 miles. So far, the zombie army was covering about 3/4ths of that distance. So when you do the math of how many people can fill a mile side by side, you get (let's see, carry the five...):about:177,408 undead psycho killers coming our way. Somehow, I get the feeling that this wouldn't feel half as bad if it weren't for the stage that was set for us. Seriously, there was the ominous weather, not to mention the fact that the death aura (which i'm uncertain about whether or not I could only see), was looming over the land like a huge cloud of depression, that was literally making the crops wither as it came our way. Add that with the sight of a barley intelligent, 7-foot tall undead army coming your way, and you get an indigestion surprise in your stomach. Still, I managed to bite down my fear and focus. Right now, Quicksilver and I were running back and forth, placing the pod shooters in line, about one and a half miles from each other (the cops were already retreating back into the city, with instructions to start an evacuation); we only had ten shots from each of them, we had to make them count, and stretch them out as far as we could. After we got done with that, we had to wait a minute for the pod shooters to charge up (I still don't get why they had to charge, or why we didn't just do that on the Helicarrier).

"_Grant, Jason?" _Allyson sheepishly thought to us. "_Do you guys go to church?"_

Okaaay; that was...unexpected. It wasn't random, or at least not as random as you might think. I mean think about it. Here we were, about to face down the 'Walking Dead' X1000. The thought of dying right now was not lost on any of us, so I can definitely see why Allyson sprung up this question; if God was listening (and yes I am Christian, I do believe in God and all that stuff), we sure as hell needed his help.

"_Yeah," _I hesitantly responded to her question. "_I do."_

"_Same here," _Grant thought. "_Why, what's up?"_

"_Do you believe in God?" _she continued. "_Do you truly believe in Jesus, and what his death and resurrection means for those who follow him?"_

"_Yeah," _Grant and I responded again, kinda getting what she was implying.

"_Then pray with me. Please."_

Grant and I looked at each other for half a sec, and nodded. Together, we all shifted into our respective speed modes, joined hands, and bowed our heads as Allyson did the honors.

"Heavenly Father," she started. "It's Allyson again, or Sunbird if you will. Father, thanks so much for bringing me and the guys through these last few days, you know they've been tough on all of us. Father, we're about to go up against some really tough odds right now, and we're all really scared. Please, give us the courage to stand against the enemy, and the strength to overcome them in the battle. Keep us all safe, that includes everyone fighting on our side, and watch over us. In Jesus' name...Amen."

"Amen," Grant and I followed.

What happened next was so strange, and so mind bendingly out of left field, that I knew it had to be God doing something. As soon as we all said 'Amen', our battlesuits surged with that same Holy Water energy that Dr. Strange had flashed on the weapons cache, and when the surge died down, I felt...better? stronger? faster? calmer? all of the above? It was like all of the fear and doubt had just left my body; like someone had stuck a fish hook in me, and just pulled it out. I looked around and Grant and Allyson, and it didn't even take telepathy to figure out that we were all on the same page; we were so (^ #!&amp;% ready! We came down out of Speed Mode, just as the blood fortress dropped, and I heard the voice of Captain Sanders in my new earpiece.

"Thunder Man!" he shouted. "The shooters are primed and ready. Permission to fire?"

"Negative Captain!" I responded. "We commence with Plan A. Should that be unsuccessful, fire on my signal!"

"Understood sir! Shooters on standby!"

I looked over at Allyson, and gave her a quick nod. She nodded back, and went to work. She raised her hands outward, and closed her eyes in concentration. Immediately, I knew this was gonna fail, Allyson never had to concentrate this much to create a mini-sun; still she tried on. It took a total of ten seconds, but the air in front of us started to heat up, and a blazing mini-sun, struggled to surface in the center of the zombie army. The nearby ones combusted within the second, but others were not that unlucky. Looking at the mini-sun, I could see why. Allyson's mini-suns usually glowed with the golden light of..well, the sun. Plus, the heat radiating of of them were usually enough to slap your body full on into a near heat stroke. Now, her sun resembled a sunset kind of glow, and I could barely feel the heat, even from about a mile away. Allyson managed to keep up the effort for a good ten seconds, maybe taking out 1,000 or so zombies, but afterwards, she dropped her hands, and let the sun dissipate; she was clearly winded.

"What's up Sunbird?" Grant asked her. "Not enough juice in the tank?"

"As if," she responded. "It's this aura. The stone's fighting my powers, it was all I could do to get that sun up and running. I'm sorry guys, but I don't think i'll be of much use in this fight, not right now.."

That was truly a shame. I mean don't get me wrong, I give her points for effort, but if we had to bench Sunbird, this was gonna be a more difficult fight than I was aiming for.

"That's ok Sunbird," I said anyway. "We planned for this. Right now, you just hang back, see what you can do from a distance, and help out in any way you can; Super-G, Quicksilver, and I will be ok."

She didn't look too pleased about taking a back seat, but she quickly conceded to the fact that she was of more use from a distance. She nodded her head and resumed her position.

"Captain Sanders!" I said through my earpiece. "Plan A has failed, commence with Plan B on my signal!"

"Understood sir!" he responded. "Awaiting your orders!"

I summoned my sword to look more bad ass, and Grant followed suit with his axe.

"_You know what you guys?" _he thought to me and Allyson. "_This is totally a classic movie moment!"_

"_What?!" _Allyson and I thought back to him.

"_Oh come on! Chronicles of Narnia? You can't tell me this isn't just like the movie!"_

I honestly didn't have the brain cells to spare to deal with that comment, so I just made a mental note to hit him later, and moved on with the plan. As of now, the zombie army was about a mile and a half from us, we needed them to get within 800 more meters for them to be in range of our pod shooters and tanks. By the way, I think it is worth mentioning that we were about 3 miles away from the city entrance. My estimate was that there were at least a thousand people who were gonna be devoured if we did not hold the line right here; in other words, no pressure. Anyway, once the zombies were in range, I gave the signal to Captain Sanders, to launch all of the volleys in rapid fire. The ten shooters whirred to life, and started shooting huge black saucer-like objects high into the air. It took about three seconds in between shoots for the shooters to fire the next volley, and five seconds after being fired to actually do some damage, but once the carnage started, it started with a bang. Once high enough, the pods spun around in mid-air really fast, releasing hundreds of mystically charged bullets raining down on the zombie army. As soon as the bullets made contact, the zombies combusted into bright blue flames, and after wailing horribly, disintegrated faster than you could count to three. In the first volley, the bullet shower took out around 1,000 zombies or so; over the course of the next nine volleys, the bullet showers had killed over 9,000 (estimating here). After the ten consecutive volleys, the zombies did something completely unexpected; they stopped dead in their tracks (pun intended). It was brief, only for like five seconds or so, but the fear was definitely there. If they were capable of speech, they probably would've said 'Oh $#!+' in unison. As was such, they just stood and stared in our direction, as if frozen in fear. Then,in a this-is-the-scariest-$#!+-you-will-ever-see-in-your-life second, the zombie army all roared together, which sounded like a war horn magnified by ten, and started charging at our downright puny looking defense setup, at around 20 mph.

"TANKS, OPEN FIRE NOW!" I screamed into the com-links. "AIR SUPPORT, SCATTER THE DRONES, I WANT INBOUND BACKUP IN FIVE! STORM, LIGHTNING TIME, LET'S GO!

"I HEAR YOU THUNDER MAN!" she shouted back. "LET US CALL FORTH THE RAGE OF THE SKIES TOGETHER!"

As Storm and I were getting ready to summon the mother of all lightning strikes, the tanks opened fire. To say that they sounded like an army of football fans, was an understatement. It was more like the collective screams of a million football games were packaged into each shot, and fired rapidly. For a normal person, the sound would be extremely deafening; for me, it was a thousand times worse. The only good news was that the cannon fire was doing it's job. We set the tanks up to where two were side by side, and all twenty were spread over the perimeter. With each shot, the impact took out nearly 50 zombies, and that was only the average of one group. Over the total of the tanks we had at our disposal, we were taking about 500 zombies down every five seconds. If they were faster, we probably wouldn't have needed to get close, but the zombies were still running relentlessly, if not stupidly to their destruction; we had maybe three minutes before their army clashed with our, again, downright puny defense line. Anyway, back to the lightning. So like I said, the place was shrouded under a huge thundercloud. At first, I thought it might be from the stone, maybe some sort of side weather manipulation thing. But as it turned out, we were just in the right place at the right time to be in the middle of a brewing my own, I probably could've got things up and running after a few minutes, but since this was my first time actually creating a massive scale thunderstorm, as opposed to a regular lightning strike, I was glad Storm was helping me on this one. Together as one, we focused on the potent, but deeply buried energy built up in the thunder cloud. Storm was probably used to this feeling, but let me tell you that it was nothing like I had ever felt before. I could feel all of the electrons in the air as if they were the blood in my veins, I could feel the energy of the storm to be, as if I was waking up a sleeping bear. My heart started racing (and that's saying something for a guy whose heart beats 100 times per minute), I felt the energy build up inside and over me at the same time. Finally, after ten seconds of buildup, multiple streaks of lightning raced across the sky in distances that covered way more than just a two mile radius. Thunder boomed louder than the tanks, and after the warning call, Storm and I unleashed the fury of the skies!

The payout was nothing short of phenomenal; at least fifty bolts of red hot lightning struck at the zombie army from multiple directions. I was aiming for the bulk of the army in the way back, but making thunderstorms, and controlling them were two way different things. Together, Storm and I kept up the thunderstorm for about 30 seconds, taking out a good 3,000; that was when I started to get cocky. I had already gotten used to the rush of power that came with summoning a full scale thunderstorm, and now I was gonna push that boundary. Now that the sky was alive with residual lightning, I didn't have to rely so much on my own energy reserves; still what I was about to do was irresponsible, reckless, and outright stupidly risky on all accounts. I willed all of the electricity in the air to collect and condense in three separate points of focus, adding a good chunk of my power in for good measure. For those of you that can't control the weather (bless your hearts), this was in all aspects, trying to control the very skies itself. Or for you non power types out there, trying to walk thirty defiant German Shepherds. Still, I managed to pull it off. With all of these three points of unbelievable power, I focused on making them manifest themselves in the form of three HUGE bolts of lightning, big enough to punch a huge hole through the Helicarrier. The task was extremely brutal, but I managed to control the bolts of lightning and move them back and forth between the oncoming army, taking out at least 1,000 zombies every few seconds. This effort was only further improved by Allyson's help. Apparently, she had took to the skies, and was hurling mini-suns deep into the heart of the zombie army. At first, these blasts were probably strong enough to destroy most of the zombies, but after they flew past the death aura, they dimmed in both power and light. Still, the explosions were doing more or less what the tanks were, so points for trying.

So let's do a quick tally. Averaging all of the kills we got from the pod shooters, tanks, lightning strikes, death beams, plus the aerial drones that were just arriving on the scene, the strike team had taken out around 20,000 zombies (give or take). We were still, about 150,000 short, and our breathing room was running dry. The zombies were less than 800 meters from our position, in fact, it was time for the speedsters to get their hands dirty. I gave the signal for the troops to whip out their guns and fire at will, help keep the pressure back. Meanwhile, I got ready to do something reckless again. You see, Grant, Quicksilver, and I had to get into the thick of the zombie army if we wanted to soften them up from the inside out. However, from what I could see, the bulk of that army was really thick, leaving no room for running or maneuvering; I had to change that.

"SUPER-G, QUICKSILVER!" I shouted to them in my com. "WE GOTTA GET IN THE INSIDE, TAKE EM' DOWN FROM THE INSIDE OUT, I'M GONNA TRY SOMETHING! BE READY TO MOVE ON MY SIGNAL!"

"UNDERSTOOD BROTHER!" Quicksilver responded. "READY TO RUN WHENEVER I HEAR THE CALL!"

"SAME HERE THUNDER MAN!" Grant said right beside me (I may have forgotten his existence for a moment). "AND CAN YOU NOT SCREAM IN MY EAR LIKE THAT?!"

I quickly apologized, and then dashed to the left, until I was clear of the tanks. Once in the clear, I did my thing. I focused on harnessing all of the electricity in the sky, which was well over 300 million volts, and once it was in one place, I willed it to crash into me in a huge, way bigger than life blast of lightning. The power was way too much to describe. All I can tell you is that the adrenaline was enough to make meth and cocaine seem like pixy stix powder in comparison. More than that, it was like lightning had literally become the blood in my veins, I could feel it pulsating through every inch of my being, charging me up, and breaking any and all barriers that I thought I had. Finally, when all of the energy was in my body, and I felt like little more than a human bomb, I focused on the zombie army, and let all of the energy go with a massive war cry. This time, instead of just random bursts of lightning. I went back to my target practice from last night, and focused on redirecting my huge and overpowered bolts of lightning where it would hurt the zombie army the most. When the lightning bolts did make impact, the results were nothing short of legendary. The bolts of lightning were directed be in such a way that they blasted a rough W into the heart of the zombie onslaught. The kill score had to be at least over 3,000, but more importantly, it left huge gaps for me, Grant, and Quicksilver to maneuver through.

"Now guys!" I shouted to them. "Let's go!"

Together, we speed into the zombie army, and started to work.

So, what's it like to run headfirst into a zombie apocalypse? In short, not so bad. Quicksilver, Grant, Allyson, and I had a plan figured out about how to deal with this, and even through Allyson was currently benched, the three of us were sufficient enough. Quicksilver and I were on cleanup duty. Basically, we were running left and right on the inside, slashing away at anything that wasn't humanish, and keeping the bulk of the army at bay. Grant was kinda doing the same thing, but with a more barbarian-like approach. He put his axe flail mode to use, and went flying around in every direction, swinging the thing with no real aim or precision whatsoever. It would be annoying and irritating if it wasn't for the fact that every time that flail went around, 20 zombies got wasted. Speaking of which, slashing the zombies down wasn't as easy for me as you might think. Sure with the Adamantium/Vibranium blade, cutting through them wasn't an issue, but their gravel-like skin still put up a bit of a fight. Ultimately, it was the holy water that did the trick. As soon as the blade touched them, the zombie's cells started to break apart faster than wet paper; once I slashed them all the way though, there was barely anything left of them to burn in the blue fire. Anyway, the three of us stayed on cleanup duty for around five or ten seconds. Quicksilver and I went left and right through the perimeter, relentlessly slashing down zombie after zombie after zombie, until after it seemed like an hour, we had slashed down every stray zombie, and had left a half a mile gap between the bulk of the army, and the remaining ones that were still being taken care of by the long range crew. Quicksilver and I took a nanosecond break and watched Grant, who was now sporting his spear mode, in mid battle roar, taking down a good handful of the zombies (he was moving soooo slow).

"Quite the warrior, isn't he?" Quicksilver jested.

"Yeah," I responded. "He does ok, but we should probably help him out anyway; last time he tried to off it alone...well, it didn't go too well.

"Any ideas, not much room for anymore running."

He had a point. In the time it took for us to take out the stray zombies, the remaining ones were filling the empty spaces. Even now, we barely had any room to run anywhere but back, and we still needed to stall for a bit more time. Then I suddenly remembered my shield. If it worked the way Mrs. Kennedy said it did, and was blessed with the water stuff, then maybe I could work with it. I summoned it, motioned for Quicksilver to wait a half sec, and did my thing. Right now, I wasn't in SMS, but I was really close. I tapped into it, and started to power up. My body surged with electricity, and I willed all of it to transfer into the shield, which then became a circle of lightning death. Then, I got a running start, came back around, and threw my shield Captain America style. The shield sliced through 20 zombies faster than you could blink, and didn't stop until it had sliced a line diagonally through the upper left flank of the army. It was going really really fast, so before it spiraled out of range, I held my hand out, and willed it to make a hard right back into the fray. The shield obeyed my command with unbelievable speed, Mrs. Kennedy must've set it to be able to cope with speedster thinking. Anyway, I kept controlling the shield, making it dash back, forth, side to side, until in no time at all (literally), 1,000 more zombies were wasted, and Quicksilver and I had some more room to work with. As an insult to injury, I willed the shield to fly further into the center of the bulk of the army, and willed all of the built up energy to detonate in a massive electric wave. The impact took out around 2,000 zombies, and left a huge hole in the zombie's offensive force. I summoned the shield back to my wrist, and willed to, go wherever it goes when i'm not using it.

"Well that was dramatic," said Quicksilver

"What can I say?" I responded. "I'm a one man show. Now come on, we got work to do."

Quicksilver and I went back to work, this time, actually running in and out of the zombie army, slashing them down, and thinning out their charging strength. Unfortunately, this was the last wave we could afford to repel. You see, our job was to divide the zombie army in half. We were currently reducing the threat of the main bulk, while the rest of our guys were taking out the remaining 10,000 that we had cut off from their backup. Even now, with the occasional glimpses I was able to get, I could see that the cut off zombies were dropping like flies. Storm kept zapping them with lightning from above, the tanks and gunfire were also doing their thing, even Dr, Strange and his crew were doing good. That nature guy was actually summoning fists of tree bark to smash the zombies into paste, and the blood sisters were somehow using blood to melt the zombies down into a reddish grey soup; disgusting. Anyway, what was 10,000 was swiftly becoming less than 3,000; Grant, Quicksilver and I had to make this last Hail Mary effort count. Besides, if nothing else, we had to get Quicksilver out of this death aura, it was probably wreaking havoc on his battlesuit's defenses.

"_Super-G!" _I thought to him, as I summoned my spear, and started whacking away. "_We gotta make this one count! Take out as many as you can, go big! After this, we gotta fall back and rally the troops!"_

"_What about the air strike?" _Super-G asked me.

"_We gotta stall a few more minutes for that, Fury just deployed the jets."_

"_Gotcha! Alright then, let's do it!"_

Together, Quicksilver, Grant and I went ham on the zombies. I ran in SMS, Grant went into Blitz Extreme, and Quicksilver tried to keep up. We stayed in the thick of things for around 30 seconds real time. Grant and I ran in every direction possible, slashing down as many zombies as we could with our spears. I occasionally blasted a line through the army, and created a barrier to hide behind until I built my speed up again, but for the most part, Grant, Quicksilver, and I were chipping the undead down the old fashioned/magically enhanced way. Finally, when I looked back, and could actually see that our people had pretty much eradicated their portion of the zombie army, I signaled Grant and Quicksilver to fall back and regroup at the base.

"Fury!" I said through my com. "The airstrike, how long?"

"T minus five minutes Thunder Man," he said. "Hold them off just a little while longer."

Super. Just super.

"Ok you guys!" I said in a mass message over my com. "We gotta hold em' off until the cavalry gets here, so here's what were gonna do. Storm, Dr. Strange, I need you in the air. Use lightning, fire, brimstone, whatever, just focus your attacks on the bulk of the remaining forces, thin them out for us. Azaria and Abimbola, use your blood magic to bottleneck the far right and left sides of the charge. Do whatever it takes, just try and keep them at a manageable perimeter, we may not be outgunned, but numbers and space are factors. Whoever controls the tanks drones, keep them shooting, but target the further zombies, the rest of us can't fight while worrying about stray shells blowing us to oblivion; the same goes for the guys who control the aerial drones. Finally, everyone else, just fight. Agents, use whatever you got in those suits to kill as many of these SOB's as you can. Heroes, do whatever it is you can, but don't go all cowboy gung ho,i'm lookin' at you Super-G, try to stay within range of somebody, help em' out if they need it."

Again, you'd be surprised how willingly an army of highly trained operatives, and well experienced heroes took orders from a guy who was still learning the ropes.

"_Way to rally the troops, Sergeant Thunder-Man," _Sunbird thought to me. "_You thinkin' about join the military any time soon?"_

"_Nah," _I thought back to her. "_I'd probably get booted out for zapping my commanding officer anyway; you sure you wanna be down here? You can stay in the sky with Storm and Dr. Strange if you want."_

"_I'll assume that was chivalry speaking instead of pigheadedness. And for the record, the stone's influence is starting to fade. I won't be able to summon a solar bomb or anything like that, but I can still move and whip my blades fast enough to not die."_

She summoned her swords for emphasis, and started daggers at the zombie army, as if mentally scolding them for making me overprotective of her. Speaking of which, they were approaching fast. Currently, the zombie army was packing at a little over 143,000 strong, but still dwindling as the tanks, and aerial drones kept up the good work. Storm and Dr. Strange were already in the air, taking zombies down by the dozens with an odd mixture of lightning, truck-sized hail, and what must have been holy water blasts. Whatever it was, it was doing the trick, and my ears were filled with the sweet music of zombie death wails (yeah, i'm a bit disturbed). As the zombie army got within 400 meters of the army, I summoned my shield, and loosened myself up. The blood twins started to do their thing as well. On either side of the zombie army, walls of red hot blood materialized, and started burning right through their farther flanks. The initial impact took out around 7,000 zombies, but apparently, the bigger the blood, the more effort it took to maintain it. The twins switched from flooding tactics, to construct tactics. From giant swords, to huge demon claws, it wasn't pretty, but it was getting the job done; more importantly, the zombie army was less spread out, giving us the same edge the Spartans had in 300 (and yes, of course in the actual historical battle, i'm not a moron). Once, the zombie army got within 200 meters, I made my counter move.

"ALRIGHT EVERYONE!" I shouted through the coms. "WE GOT THIS! CHARGE!"

1,000+ brave agents and heroes counter charged an army that was still about 140X their size. Unfortunately for them, the zombies didn't have the resolve that we did; one way or another, we were gonna hold them off until the airstrike delivered. Heck, if the air strike didn't hurry, there might not be anything left for it to destroy.

"_We got this?" _Grant laughed at me, as he flew with the charge. "_That's the best battle cry you could come up with?"_

"_It wasn't that bad!" _I snapped back at him.

"_Oh yes it was!" _Allyson thought to me (I still can't get used to her running as fast as me). "_Fighting may be your thing, but you really need to work on your presentation."_

"_Whatever," _I thought to them both. "_Let's just rekill some undead losers."_

"_See?" _thought Grant. "_That was better, say stuff like that!"_

I ignored them and focused on the charge. Our squad was about 100 meters away from the oncoming undead force, so I decided to try and even up the odds a little more for our guys. While running (which was only at like 20 mph, I was barely using any Speed Momentum), I charged my shield up with as much voltage as I could, tapped into SMS, making everyone look frozen, and then threw my shield out towards the zombies. I moved my hand back and forth rapidly, taking out entire handfuls of zombies with every wave of my arm. Finally, to top it all off, I did that thing again, where I willed all of the voltage in my shield to explode in a massive destructive wave; the total kill was around 1,000. Not big enough to make a real difference, but hey, 1,000 less zombies to worry about. Anyway, I called my shield back to my hand, came down from SMS, and faced the charge with the rest of my team. In less than five seconds, after a tense all-or-nothing charge, we finally clashed.

The fight was…well there's no other way to put it; AWESOME! I honestly didn't know why though. Here I was, fighting the stone of death itself, to protect thousands of people, and my own existence. I should've been terrified, frozen in fear, $#!+ing my pants; but I was honestly having a ball. There was something about this, the fighting, the adrenaline, that gave me a release from a pressure that I didn't even know was over me. I could honestly say, that after God knows how many years, I felt like myself again, and I couldn't even remember what that feels like in the first place. So yeah, the battle was kinda epic. As soon as we got in range, I slashed my sword right through a zombie, and didn't stop there. Now, I wasn't able to run or anything like that, so I had to use my speed in another way. Instead of focusing my speed on a linear point (A-B), I focused on making my reflexes, and attack speed faster, while still maintaining a 10mph linear speed. Time was both slow and fast for me. I was quick enough to slash down 20 zombies that were in my direct line of sight, however, my speed sense did more than occasionally go off, meaning that a good handful of zombies were still getting at my blind spots. Still, as quick, tenacious, and as skilled as I was, I really wasn't the driving force for our side. For one, Wolverine and Black Panther were absolute monsters in battle. Wolverine was hacking down zombies left and right in every way possible. It was rare that a zombie got a hold of him, but if one did, they would find themselves missing a hand, or arm, or head. Black Panther was no less impressive. He was using his claws, doing some type of African Kung-Fu stuff, and was basically putting in some mad work. He wasn't exactly fighting forwards, so much as letting the fight come to him; simple and effective, my kind of fighter. Added on to their savagery, Nightcrawler was popping up in random spots, thrashing a handful of zombies and then vanishing somewhere else (he popped up next to me a couple of times), and the other ground fighters were holding their own (I assume). Besides, the skill and finesse that Wolverine, Black Panther, and I brought to the table, sheer power was also a key factor in what made our assault such a success. In the distance, about 50 meters to my right, I saw 50 zombies get busted all at once. When the dust cleared, I saw Grant, Ms. Marvel, and Rogue, all together as a unit, basically being human monster trucks. Grant was swinging his axe and sword back and forth with a well balanced mixture of skill and power. Every time those things went swinging, at least ten zombies met their doom. However, it was really Ms. Marvel and Rogue who were stealing the show. Ms. Marvel was in her zone, either punching down zombies with her fists, or blasting them to hell with her photon blasts. Her face was so calm, focused, and collected, that I had no doubt that she could've done this all day. Rogue, who wasn't as bad ass as Ms. Marvel, made up for it with her suit; which I have got to talk about! I had no doubt that these were just cheap knockoffs of the real thing, but if they were, they were as close to Iron Man as we suits had energy repulsors, and energy weapons that Rogue, Spider-Man, and every other non-major powered hero was using to their full advantage. In every direction possible, you could see some random guy (or girl) blasting energy from their palms, and hear the horrified death shrieks of the targeted zombies. If not that, then they were either using the machine gun function, or the energy saber function to get the job done. With how well the heroes and agents were doing with their suits (which was really freaking good), it raised the question of why didn't Fury just employ his own personal army for this Stones Of Olympus thing, but then again, only a fool doesn't heed the advice of supernatural fortune tellers.

In addition to the amazing ground force team we had, our aerial division was just as impressive. War Machine, Falcon, and Angel had taken to the air (not too high), and were basically dive bombing the further zombies that the ground forces weren't getting to, and the drones weren't hitting. Angel and Falcon were shedding their feathers, which were made of some type of metal, and pelting any zombies within reach. Angel occasionally landed for a few seconds, slashed his wings around, taking about twenty of the undead with him, and took to the skies again. War Machine was just using his trademark mini-gun, and repulsors to do an even more efficient, but kinda boring to look at, job. In less than three minutes, we had taken out at least 50,000 zombies or so. Hell, give us another twenty minutes, and we probably could've swept them all under the rug. Still, our defense was holding, and we had a little under two minutes until air support got here. As I was slicing a zombie in two with my sword, thinking that this couldn't get any better, a burst of golden flame flashed in front of me, taking out the five zombies that I had my eyes on; yeah things got slightly better.

Ten meters from where I was standing, Allyson was cooling down from that solar wave she had just unleashed. I couldn't tell how many zombies she had just decimated, but I could see that she was still surrounded pretty bad. I rushed in to help her, stabbing an oncoming zombie in the gut, blocking another one's attack with my shield, and then decapitating it. Finally, to even out the odds, I unleashed my own destructive wave, taking out 30 surrounding zombies, and giving Allyson and I enough room to work with.

"_I had it under control," _she quickly responded. "_But thanks anyway."_

"_No problem," _I responded, "_Wanna team up real quick; all the other cool kids are."_

"_Just try and keep up dude."_

Together, we killed the last minute and a half with some good old fashioned zombie destruction. I thought that I would have had to do most of the work, what with Allyson's power being all nerfed and such; boy was I wrong. She may not have been able to use the majority of her powers but her speed and skill with her swords were more than enough. She quickly stabbed or slashed down any zombie within her reach, ducking their swings, and getting inside their guard to give them the finishing blow. At one point, she summoned her spear, threw it through the chests of like 5 zombies, and started using her throwing knives. Again, every throw hit it's mark. The head, chest, neck, whatever, when Allyson threw a knife, a zombie died a horrible death. She did that for a good few seconds, summoned her spear back to her hand, and started slashing and stabbing away, actually finding the spare power to ignite it in golden flame. I wasn't doing so bad myself in the fighting department, but Allyson was the star of this show. Her face was lit up with such passion and determination, the kind that truly defines my definition of beauty, that I was finally able to admit to myself something I was trying to deny from day one; I had the hots for this chick. That made the fact that she pretty much hated me all the more painful. Anyway, with Allyson being a warrior supreme, and the clock ticking down to less than ten seconds, I decided to make my own mark on the battle. I slashed a zombie down, summoned my spear, and tapped into a good chunk of my electric reserves. Once my body was lost in the voltage, I slammed the but of my spear on the ground, and the lightning was channeled through it, and into the battle field. Basically, I was doing a really ramped up version of my heat seeking lightning. With this much voltage to work with, it was definitely dangerous to try, but nothing that would hurt me or anyone else. Every bolt of lightning hit a zombie and moved on to another one, avoiding any and all allies (I actually focused on the bit from The Son of Neptune, where Percy used the Legion eagle, to help me focus). The lightning traveled in every direction possible, not just forward, so it was a really good thing that I had a much larger usage of my brain capacity, otherwise I would've never been able to focus on every single bolt of lightning that I had unleashed. Five seconds (twenty from my perspective) and over ten million volts later, 30,000 zombies were decimated, and my troops were in a rough but spaced out group. You may ask why I didn't do this before hand, but i'll turn the question right back and ask why doesn't Thor just summon an F5 tornado when he fights with the Avengers. It's all about presentation (plus preparation), never use your trump card for your first move; besides, with the air support coming in, all of that was unnecessary, it was basically to show off.

Moving on. After summoning the Fulminata Blast (and yes that's my official name for it), I heard the screeching roar of incoming fighter jets (a little more than I wanted to). Less than three seconds later, the pilots dropped them over the battlefield, and I watched as the field was slowly (in my perspective) engulfed in holy blue flames. If you're wondering why I wasn't freaking out and trying desperately to get everyone off of the field (which I could have), it was because we weren't in any danger. According to the witch doctor, the flames could only harm people who weren't pure of heart (like undead sinners). Everyone else would only feel the sensation of taking a hot shower. I turned off my speed perception, and let myself experience the event in real time. As the flames engulfed me, I closed my eyes (and instinctively raised my arms over my face), but I honestly couldn't feel anything higher that 70 degrees. The flames lasted for about five seconds, and then gradually started to extinguish. When I could see ahead, most of the zombies were done. The only ones left were a last pitiful defense that the stone just managed to puke up, but the zombie toll was only 3,000; I could do this by myself!

"EVERYONE FORWARD!" I shouted into the coms. "HIT EM' FAST AND HARD, LET'S FINISH THIS!"

Everyone charged forward at full speed, which averaged at about 60mph (for the battlesuit users; the speedsters, flyers, and all the rest were way ahead of the pack). All of the heroes that could keep up with me (and my other teammates), actually got to have a last bit of fun. By the way, I think it is worth mentioning that with so many zombies destroyed, the stone's influence was about the same as the success of the president's second term; meaning Allyson was back to her sun goddess form, flying head on , like a missile ready to kill some fools. Before we made contact with the remaining zombies, I did something kinda cool. I focused on creating a mini storm cloud over their heads, and willed the mini storm to have twice as much voltage in it's lightning strikes than it usually would. It took a little more concentration than normal (which I can't even begin to describe; what does a little more concentration mean when you can use 100% of your brain capacity?), but when the finish product was released, a grey blanket swirled over the zombie mass, and in a quick flash, 1,000 of them were suddenly missing their heads. Allyson was blasting golden fireballs into the remaining undead, plus Grant had already threw his axe, and was controlling it from a distance, add that with the fact that the blood twins were using a wave of blood that they were surfing on (almost making me puke), to create raining spear constructs, and you get about 500 zombies total by the time we ACTUALLY got close enough to use melee. The rest of the battle was so easy, child's play doesn't even begin to describe it. With my speed, Grant's strength, Allyson's power, and all of the other heroes and agents who were fast enough to get to the fight before it was over, we decimated the zombies, and made a beeline to the stone. I raced ahead of the others. There was nobody to stop me. No zombies, no barriers, just me, and a floating purple rock shaped like a skull.

It was only one-tenth of a second, my hand was literally an inch away from the stone; that's where it all went wrong.

Reality distorted, and everything went black. I felt the air change, as if it had suddenly gotten heavier, then my vision came back. It didn't take any time at all to make sense of my surroundings, because this time, I was sure my brain was not lying to me. Right in front of me, literally an inch away, the Green Goblin was clenching his hand around the stone of Hades. My mind immediately started reeling. THIS DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN! My Speed Sense didn't pick anything up, he wasn't using his glider (I would've sensed the electricity); heck, his face looked like he was in mid sentence talking to someone else. No, reality simply broke, and the Goblin was now here, when he was probably God knows how many miles away. If you're asking why I wasn't kicking his ass, or slicing his hand off, it was because I couldn't. everything happened too fast, even for me. I didn't even have time to run, or defend myself, as Green Goblin roared like an army of lions, and released a deadly explosive wave of death energy, taking me down with it.

I remembered hearing screaming, really loud booms, and lots of roaring. I felt the area around me going to hell, I could feel the death aura somehow retracting in on itself, into a massive singularity; that didn't make me feel any better. However, I couldn't get up. For those of you that are unaware of what this feels like, let me give you a gist. Imagine you just had a good night's sleep. It's Saturday morning, you have nothing important to do, and you're looking forward to having fun, doing whatever it is that you do. The only problem is:your body is completely screwed up. You're mentally conscious and aware of the fact that you are awake, and that you should be getting up, but for whatever reason, your body is not responding, you're a prisoner inside of yourself. Well that's only half of what it felt like for me. I was awake inside myself, I could kinda feel my way around the area with my Thunder Sense, and I could just tell my friends, and teammates were getting the $#!+ beat out of them by whatever it is that Goblin was doing. I wanted, no I NEEDED to get up and help them out, but my body was conked out by the concussive wave; I wasn't going anywhere. I let myself be tortured by the sounds of the carnage, until I actually remembered i'm basically a walking conductor who can heal himself with voltage. Right now my body was absorbing the 2,000 volts constantly flowing through my suit, but that really was not enough to get me back on my feet. I focused as hard as I could on making my body surge with as much voltage as my unconscious body could muster. It took about 10 seconds, but after that, my body started to surge with over 100,000 volts; it was only a matter of time before I sat up straight like The Undertaker, gasping loudly.

The sight was actually worse than what I thought. Goblin was in a ball of purple energy, floating 100 feet in the air. All around him, purple lightning was shooting out in violent, unpredictable blasts (it's a wonder I wasn't struck). All around, giant zombies (15 feet tall) were ravaging what was left of our strike team. I say that because the only people who were left fighting on our side were: Dr. Strange, Allyson, Grant, and the blood twins. They were all holding their own, and this wouldn't have been that much of a problem, but everyone else was gone. Every agent, hero, and other magician was simply gone without a trace, leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess (that was technically my fault). I didn't understand what was going on, and I really didn't care, I just summoned my blade, and went to work. I went into SMS, and ran up the length of a zombie (which felt like a fleshy gravel road going up), plunged my sword into it's neck, and ran around in a circle; I reached the ground before it's head did. Afterwards, I did some other spectacular kills. I ran up a zombie, summoned a mega lightning strike, and completely obliterated it. I created giant arrow constructs, and put them through the heads of three of the undead bastards, and then I repeatedly ran up, and kept decapitating zombies.

"_You trying to save some for the rest us Thunder Man?" _Grant thought to me.

"_Sorry bro," _I thought back to him. "_Gotta get while the gettin's good."_

"_Speaking of which," _Allyson thought to me, in a voice that clearly said she blamed me for this. "_What the actual hell happened? How did you fail at picking up a rock?"_

"_First of all," _I thought to her. "_I freaking had it like inches away from my hand! Once I got close, everything went dark, and when the lights came on again, Goblin had his hand on the stone; i'm surprised the blast wave didn't kill me!_

"_Ok, ok, whatever! But seeing as this mess is kinda your fault, what brilliant plan do you have to get us out of this?"_

It's not that I didn't have a plan, it's just that the plan hadn't come to me yet. Heck, my initial thoughts were to focus on the zombie giants, and then send Grant up in the air to take a little off the top of Goblin's neck; looking back on it, that was actually a pretty good plan considering how everything else turned out. Goblin, who was still in the middle of a giant electro sphere, roared extremely loud one last time, and the energy that was bouncing off of him, immediately retracted into his body as he plummeted to the ground in a massive ball of purple energy. The force of the fall caused a minor earthquake, but even stranger, was the fact that the giant zombies suddenly went into a kind of trance state, almost like they were being given specific orders not to consume our flesh. Everything went quiet for a few tense seconds as the dust slowly started to clear. Suddenly, my Speed Sense kicked in like a tank. Through the thick layer of dust, five different skull constructs flew out in various directions. These skulls were about the size of a big screen TV, and while I may have been immune to magic, I was clearly not immune to concussive force; in other words, I created a giant shield construct, and held that mother up for dear life. Allyson did the same for herself, and Grant simply took to the air, and got the heck out of the way; the others (Dr. Strange and the blood twins), were not so lucky. Now to be fair, there was probably only 200 meters in between them and the blasts, plus the things were going at nearly 300mph; completely undodgeable without superhuman speed. As such, I was actually surprised to see the magicians actually conjure up a shield to defend themselves (and no I couldn't save them, I wasn't paying attention). Against anything else, their shields probably would've held up, but Goblin's blasts acted different. When they made contact with the shields, the skulls didn't just explode, they expanded into energy tendrils (like Venom's, but purple), and basically overpowered their entire bodies. The process maybe took about 1 second max, and boy was the result not pretty. The energy basically melted into their bodies, and caused them to collapse on the ground. When the team and I caught up to them, we discovered how bad of shape they were in. They had purple energy lightly spewing from their eyes and mouth, their heart beats were so feint, it was almost non-existent; even Allyson's healing songs couldn't wake them up. I was starting to freak out. My second mission as leader, and I was about to get Grant and Allyson killed, on top of probably being responsible for the death of 1,000 S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, plus a handful of the world's greatest heroes. Believe it or not, things actually got worse from there.

The dust from Goblin's impact suddenly vanished in a light wind that echoed from the center, and in the meteor crater, was…..technically Goblin. He was bigger. Much bigger (like 8ft tall). His arms looked strong enough to snap a telephone pole in half, and he had biceps bigger than basketballs. His face was nothing short of purely fu(k!%$ terrifying, with purple flames for eyes, giant Minotaur-like horns jutting from either side of his head, and fangs sharp enough to chew through steel. Of course he had power thighs that could withstand the weight of a trash compactor, and to top it all off, his armor was legit. It was made of some type of black metal that looked like a mix between obsidian, and titanium with a new paint job. The stuff completely covered his massive chest and pecs, and was also used to make his arm shields; also on a side note, he had finger long black talons (thought you ought to know that). Goblin started to glow with death energy, and started levitating. He was honestly the most frightening thing I have ever seen in my life; the zombie army couldn't hold a candle to the flame of his badassness. As he slowly started to hover towards us (we were kinda frozen in terror), a black medieval sword (like the one the Dark Knight uses in Infinity Blade), materialized in his hands like building blocks assembling themselves. He floated a few feet further to us (and yes, we still were scared stiff), and then suddenly stopped. He just stared into the distance for a few seconds, and then suddenly looked at me. Let me tell you something, his glare wasn't exactly as mind crashing as the Norn-Fates, but it was pretty damn close. His glare wasn't exactly as all knowing as theirs, but I got the feeling that he was looking down my entire life line, and that he knew without a doubt: when I would die, how I would die, and the funeral home that would lay me into the ground. He vaguely smirked at me, like my existence amused him in some way, but then quickly turned his gaze over to Grant. Now I can understand body language pretty well, and while Goblin wasn't showing much of anything other than the fact that he wanted to bust some heads, his face was basically saying:'_You got a little something to you, but you're not worth my time." _He stared at Grant for a little longer than he did at me, but the result was still the same; it was like Grant was closer to his mark, but still not high enough. Finally, he looked straight at Allyson, and he broke into a really toothy grin. He started walking towards us, swinging his sword casually, letting us savor our despair. He opened his mouth to say something, and I immediately knew something was off. For one, Goblin (like Norman Osborn), was not there anymore. I wasn't too keen on the idea of killing this guy, but I could already see that he was too far gone, the stone had burned so much of him away that there was nothing left to save. Besides that, I could see in his eyes that he was just a puppet listing to the commands of somebody else; I know this because even with purple fire eyes, he still had a really glazed look in his eyes, the kind that said he wasn't exactly 100% in control of his actions.

"_Allyson Tabitha Grace," _he said in a voice that sounded like a million ghouls speaking in unison. "_The ones on high have deemed you too dangerous to live, prepare for your death."_

He glowed with his purple Super Saiyan aura, and dashed at Allyson with bullet-like speed; that shook me out of my freeze. Call me corny, whipped, whatever (if you wanna get tazed by my finger), but nobody was gonna hurt Allyson, not while I was able to do something about it. I was about to counter charge Goblin, which would've ended in disaster, but before I could, Grant came in from the air with enough speed to put a Lamborghini at top speed to shame, and trucked into Goblin. The two fought in mid-air for a few seconds, Goblin swung his sword at Grant, but Grant quickly summoned his axe, blocked the strike, roundhouse kicked Goblin in the head, and hit him in the chest with his axe with more strength than I knew he had. Goblin should've died on the spot, even if the axe didn't cut through him, the impact should've shattered his bones, and left him a broken husk. Instead, Goblin just flew backwards, on a collision route to the city, and Grant took off after him. I imagine Grant expected us to follow his lead, and we actually were going to, but in the distance, Goblin shot a huge energy beam towards us that hit the ground, intensifying the gravity to where even I couldn't move, and closing me and Allyson in some kind of death barrier that was as large as a football stadium. At first, I thought he was just aiming to trap us inside the barrier while he had Grant all to himself; that was not the case. Zombie giants started springing up five at a time, like undead flowers. There were way too many of them to just cut down with my speed, besides, that would take way too much effort. Instead, I created a huge Spartan combat avatar, and started killing undead fools with my huge spear and shield.

"_Ok," _I thought to Allyson. "_Just so we're clear, this is SO NOT MY FAULT!"_

"_I CAN SEE THAT!" _she rammed into my head. "_Just keep them off of me. This aura is strong, but it's power is limited, give me like ten minutes, and I can scrape up enough power to blow this stand!"_

"_Cool," _I responded. "_Let's go with that, and not to rush you, but we gotta help Super-G. He's strong, but Goblin looks like he's on a different level. If we don't-"_

"_I know," _she quickly responded. "_Believe me, I know."_

We didn't say anything else to each other, everything else was pretty self explanatory. I focused on stabbing giant zombies in the everywhere; hacking them down, and keeping them the hell away from Allyson. I could feel her static field heating up, which meant she was also doing her thing. Ten minutes, that's how long she said it would take to get free; I hoped Grant would be able to hold his own until then.

(Grant's Perspective)

Ok people, let's get a playback going here. First, Delta Force and friends show up on the scene, whip some zombie ass, get within an inch of grabbing the skull candy, and then get thrusted into post-zombie hell, with a little OP Green Goblin for good measure. Don't worry folks, Super-G is on the case. So skipping ahead, Goblin's all super strong, he talks some mad $#!+ to Sunbird, tries to come at her, and I denied him access, and sent him shooting off into the distance after a minor tussle; things got really intense after that.

I soared after Goblin, swinging my axe at his face and chest, hoping to end this faster than the Venom fight. My swings probably would've been strong enough to take the fight out of him, but I underestimated his recovery time. On my first swing, a purple barrier popped up, and the force of the failed attack was enough to bounce me back a good few feet. Goblin took that single second to recover, summon his sword, and counter charge me. I immediately said a silent thanks to Sunbird for teaching me how to fight, and yes to be frank, this guy couldn't handle a blade for $#!+. I ducked his swing, which was not hard to do considering how fast I was, summoned my sword quickly, came up with a slash, completely severing Goblin's right arm, and with the leftover momentum, I spun into a reverse kick, and sent the creep careening further into the distance. I summoned my axe in my left hand, and soared after him. Goblin tried to put up a fight with his other hand, blasting me with a ray of death energy, death ray basically, but missed; I made him pay for that. I slashed at his neck with my sword, but he somehow managed to put a body shield over himself. Again, I refused to let this be a Venom rerun, so I decided to cut loose on him, and actually show how much force a swing has when the swinger can bench press 100,000 tons. I slashed and hacked at his body shield for a total of four earth shaking, glass shattering blows before his body shield completely failed, and he went rocketing into...oh crap! The city! I cussed myself out so much. I was so focused on pounding Goblin into oblivion, that I forgot that the objective was to keep zombie threats AWAY from the city. I went into Blitz Extreme, and soared after him, determined to clean my mess up. I got under him and tried for another killing blow. This time, I almost severed his head, but he managed to quickly create another sword in his spare hand, and parry my strike. That opened my eyes a little bit. You see, I was in Blitz Extreme, which meant I was moving way faster than he should've been able to react. If what he did just now was an indication of things to come, then I was in for one hell of a fight.

The good news was, the impact of my strike was enough to alter his momentum, and send him slightly flying into the air; slight, but enough. I kept the pressure on him, using my sword and axe to pound away at him furiously. With two weapons, you'd think that the fight would be so unfair, one-sided would be an understatement, but that wasn't the case. Maybe he underestimated me, and came to the realization that he'd have to step his game up, but as of now, even with one arm, Goblin was just as good with a blade as Jason or Nightcrawler. Don't get me wrong, I managed to get some good shots in to the torso area, and with a few mid-air backflip kicks, spin attacks, and some well timed slashes to the exposed part of his legs, severing them completely. I managed to give Goblin a good run for his money; even with him blasting purple fire, and shooting purple lightning from his eyes. With only one limb left, I decided to use my smarts, and actually use my speed to outstrip him, and get some good shots in from the back. For a while it seemed like that was working. Goblin strengthened his body shields quite a bit, but with me constantly moving round and round, he wasn't able to put that sword of his to good use. I kept the beat down going for about 10 seconds straight before something odd happened. All off a sudden, three purple tube like things flying towards Goblin and I, caught my attention. I didn't know what they were, but they were coming in hot. The distraction was for a second or two, but it was enough for Goblin to get a good swing at my head, which missed, and blast me away with a death ray, Again, whether it was from magical immunity, or physical toughness, the blast didn't hurt, the force of it was just enough to get me off of Goblin, and give him some breathing room; that was my biggest mistakes. The UFO's weren't just random tubes of energy, they were his severed appendages, the ones I had worked so hard to slice off of his body. The severed limbs flew back to Goblin, and after a quick second, in a really sickening reattachment, Goblin was whole again, cracking his knuckles, and actually doing mid-air squats.

"_So," _he taunted me. "_Care to try that again?"_

He didn't give me an option, as he summoned two swords, and came charging at me with the speed of a missile. I quickly summoned my axe and my sword, and $#!+ went down. For five minutes, Goblin and I battled in the air relentlessly. I'll give it to the guy, he was strong, fast, powerful, and looked bad ass, if it wasn't for the fact that I was dead set on splitting his head open, i'd say i've found my arch nemesis. Anyway, Goblin was definitely no pushover, but thanks to my recently developed skill with weapons, I was able to dodge, block, parry, and even get in between his strikes to get in some good slashes at his chest. Goblin didn't slow down for even a second, it was like my best strikes had little to no effect on him at all. Sure he was wearing armor that seemed kinda indestructible, not to mention the fact that he was coursing with the energy of the god of the Underworld, but still, everyone had to have limits right? Besides, Goblin was really fast, like Thunder Man fast. Once or twice he almost impaled me with those swords of his, and because they unpleasantly reminded me of my time with Dragon Empress, I decided it was in my best interest to not let those things touch me. So after five minutes of intense death battle, things started to…unravel. First, I managed to dodge on of Goblin's stabs, and slice his arm off with my sword, but before I could capitalize on that, he took off backwards, making me waste time chasing him. By the time I actually caught him, his arm had already reattached itself, and the sword fight continued. This time, after maneuvering his strikes a little more, Goblin basically had both my arms pinned with his sword hands. I saw his eyes start to glow with purple voltage, so before I found out what thunder of the Underworld tasted like, I tapped into Blitz Extreme, and headbutted him as hard as I could. Goblin immediately recoiled, uttering curses at me, and I wasn't that much better off. First off, that $#!+ actually hurt; my head was still throbbing, it wasn't supposed to throb anymore. Second, that impact should've left Goblin a state of unconsciousness, his skull should've been fractured. Whatever that stone had him on, I was now starting to worry, because even Venom wasn't as strong as this guy. So, after a quick second to heal up, Goblin charged me again. Instead of matching his moves, I tapped into Blitz Extreme again, floated over his swings, and then severed his wrists, followed by a slash across his throat, severing it completely. Goblin's face was a look of eerie calm rage, as his lifeless body started plummeting to the earth. I allowed myself to believe that it was over, I mean I severed the guy's head, he had to be dead right? Well as Goblin's body and severed limbs still fell to the ground, they started to glow with that same stupid purple energy that was a sign that this fight was clearly not over. Quicker than before, he reattached himself, and with a really loud roar, he came shooting at me like a ballistic missile. This time, he didn't summon any type of weapon, although his fists were blazing with the white hot intensity of probably like 1,000 souls; in other words, he was pissed off, and wanted to make this fight as up close and personal as possible.

Normally, i'd brace for impact, and figure out a plan later, but things were weird now; you don't just let a super villain suped up on undead steroids take the upper hand in a fight. So instead of taking the hit like a punching bag, I flew backwards, avoiding his charge altogether, and then, while in Blitz Extreme, I circled around him, got a good 200 meter head start, and came back around with a Super-G sized punch to his lower spine. Normally, i'd imagine this type of punch would at least make guys like Goblin flinch, and I could definitely tell that he felt a little of the effects, but that armor, whatever it was made of, took like 85% of the blow; that wasn't the worse part. After hitting him, and realizing that I did zilch in damage, I kept up the punches and kicks, while orbiting around him, and hitting him in random places. I hit him like 100 times in the chest and lower body, the same on the upper and lower back, not to mention the fact that I sliced his head off again for good measure, and then kept at the punching. I kept up at this for like 30 seconds real time, until Goblin managed to stop one of my cross punches, and punt kick me 100 feet further into the air. Ironically enough, the worst part about that wasn't the decapitated corpse defending itself. Again, I was in Blitz Extreme, which averages from around 10-20,000 mph in combat speed. That meant that Goblin was now more or less fast enough to keep up with me, on top of being stronger, tougher, and more bad ass; I was totally screwed.

Before I even had a chance at recovering and setting up a defense, I felt a huge fiery fist pelt me in the chest, which felt like a wrecking ball hitting me at 100mph, and I went soaring backwards. half a sec later, I felt another fist uppercut me higher into the air, which at this point, was probably somewhere in the stratosphere. This cycle continued for about five more hits, until Goblin made the mistake of trying to barbecue me. I started to feel this type of lukewarm heat above my head, and when I looked up, I was already being doused with Underworld fire. Now, before you write off the undead fire, keep in mind, I was already charbroiled in like 3,000 degree heat; lukewarm to me is probably 500 degrees. Besides, this was magical fire, the type of stuff my body was made specifically to defend against. If it wasn't for my super awesome magic shield, who knows what this fire would be doing to me. Anyway, in the wake of Goblin's failed attempt to barbecue me, I was able to get a split second to recover, and as you know by now, when it comes to speedsters, a split second is all we need. I shot up like a bullet, easily swooping through the fire, and delivering a massive uppercut to Goblin's disgusting face. The hit was strong enough to level a small tower, 60% of my overall strength, and the impact was just enough to make Goblin's face move back a little. That was scary. Before Goblin even had a chance to respond to that love tap I gave him, I reeled my fist back, and hit him in the chest with everything I had. The force of the blow was enough to send Goblin soaring backwards about 50 meters, but I knew he barely felt the punch. I soared after him, hitting him as hard as I could repeatedly, basically playing a game of mid-air soccer with my fists. But after five consecutive hits, that probably would've been enough to trash a few skyscrapers, Goblin dodged my sixth strike, and swung at me with a blazing hammer punch. He hit me dead center in my back, and sent me plummeting towards the ground, but this time I refused to be a human tennis ball. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, stopped myself in mid-air, and looked up just in time to see, dodge, and counter a soaring downwards punch from the big green undead machine. I reverse kicked him in the head, sending him flying backwards, and pursued. Unfortunately, by the time I caught up, Goblin was already recovered and ready to go. Still, I kept up my momentum, faking like I was going for a face shot, and then surprising the hell out of him when I juked him, and gave him a rib shattering punch to the abs. Goblin and I went at it like this for a while; a big mid-air battle of Titans, worthy enough of a DBZ moment. For the record, I was clearly the superior warrior when it came to skill; thanks Sunbird! When it came to speed, we were pretty much on par with each other, but I took the cake on that by a hair, considering that I actually could incorporate some aerial maneuvers. But Goblin, and I hate to say it through my gritted teeth, was clearly stronger. For every five of my best hits to his face or chest, all it took was a wild backhand, and yes he did backhand me away a few times, to even up the score. Hell, if I could be beaten to death, this guy was the one who could do it. Like I said, my speed, skill and reflexes were all that kept this fight kind of even, if not the only reason I was still alive. We went at it like this for like five minutes, give or take; after that came the transitional, not turning point of the fight.

I was coming at Goblin with my fiercest punch and kick combo, making sure to mix up my strikes, and keep a sharp eye out for any surprise desperate moves. Goblin and I kept at it relentlessly, playing a kind of cat and mouse game with each other, and I made the mistake of thinking that Goblin wasn't capable of using things like tactics, strategy, or traps. Yeah...let's just say I paid for that a little more than I would've liked. Basically, after 30 seconds of constant pounding, which totaled up to at least 5,000 punches and kicks, Goblin managed to block one of my strikes, try for a counter, and when I dodged, he shot me with a blast of lightning from his eyes. I went soaring backwards, although the pain wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; but that wasn't the worst part. When I recovered, and tried to charge Goblin again, I felt constructs, like handcuffs on my arms and legs, yank me backwards ever so slightly. The constructs weren't heavy, I could've easily broken through them, but they were unexpected, I was put off-balance for a split second, but that was more than enough time for Goblin to f^(# me up. He was already on a collision course with me, and by the time I knew what was happening, I felt his fist sinking into my chest. The impact was nothing short of excruciating. I actually coughed up some blood, my ribs felt like they were on fire, for the first time since being a mutant, I actually remembered what it was like to be in mind numbing pain. Goblin didn't stop there. He uppercutted me high into the air, and you better believe he didn't give me time to recover. Before I knew what was what anymore, I heard the sound of thunder, and my nerves were overloaded with the force of a lightning strike so powerful, even Thor would've been jealous.

This time I actually did plummet to the ground; just at like 224,000 mph, that's how fast a bolt of lightning is. I don't remember much about the explosions, all I knew was that I was in the air one moment, and seven feet under asphalt the next. My body was in so much pain, I could barely breathe, much less move, and I could hear the sound of rubble crumbing above me; the city that I had tried so hard to keep out of danger, had just been bombarded by me. I don't really know how long I was under, a few seconds, a minute maybe, but I did know one thing; I wasn't dead, and it wouldn't be long until Goblin figured that out. I used every ounce of my strength and will, and commanded my body to move. Forget the fact that I felt like I was just used as the filling for a million truck sandwich, forget the fact that I was in more danger than I had ever been in my life, forget the fact that my team was MIA, and I was alone. I was Super-G dammit! And if I had to see it through with my last breath, I was gonna stop Goblin, no matter what.

I exploded out of the ground, and my body immediately called for a Timeout. Like I said, Goblin was definitely not gonna fall for the whole possum death thing, and he clearly was still out to punish me a little more before he went for the kill. I quickly summoned my axe, thrusted it at his face, and commanded it to extend into it's flail form, as well as jut out a blade from it's head. By the way, my axe is now synced to my brainwaves, using electrodes that course through my suit as a network to my brain and axe. Not to be over dramatic, but in a way, I guess you could say my brain was hardwired to my axe as long as I was wearing the suit; or at least that's how Mrs. Kennedy explained it. Anyway, the blade went right through Goblin's eye, not to mention the fact that my axe was lodged deep into his head. I quickly flew upwards, grabbed my handle with two hands, and swung Goblin round and round until the momentum removed him from my axe, and sent him hurtling through a few one story buildings. Oh, quick fun fact, Scott City is not very big, don't expect any skyscrapers to be destroyed or anything. So, I soared after Goblin, who ironically enough was in the middle of what was left of the local bank. However, and this should go without saying, but the place was filled with screaming civilians. Forget beating him to a pulp, right now, the only thing that really mattered was getting this fight away from these people. I grabbed Goblin by his arm, and flew him out of the bank. My intentions were to fly him out of the city, back to Thunder Man and Sunbird, and figure out a way to put him out of action, but he had other intentions. Quicker than I could've anticipated it, I felt Goblin punt kick me so hard, I probably would've sailed from an end zone, all the way to the opposite field goal post. I managed to gain my balance, and land on my feet before hitting the ground, but Goblin was already on the verge of tackling me. I quickly ducked, cupped my fists together, and hit him with a hammer uppercut. I followed that up with a powerful punch to the chest, sending him careening into an auto parts store. Again, I raced after Goblin, determined to take this fight out of this taco stand of a town, but this time he was more than happy to greet me head on.

He rushed out of the wreckage of the auto parts store, this time with his sword of death at the ready, and charged me with the fury of a legion of undead souls; yes, I meant that as a pun. I summoned my axe again, thrusted it at Goblin, and activated it's chain mace protocol; but this time I made it do something weird. As you know, my axe responded to both my hand movements, as well as my thoughts. This means, that even in chain mace form, I had complete control of my axe's movements, essentially making it Adamantium/Vibranium anaconda. So with my new snake axe, might keep that name, I commanded my chain to wrap around Goblin's sword hand, and before he could even think of escape, I yanked him towards me, with enough strength to dislocate a T-Rex's kneecaps. Goblin came flailing towards me, his arm actually on the brink of being ripped out of it's socket, and as soon as he got close enough, I backflip kicked him under his chin, and spun into a reverse kick that hit him square in the chest. Now take this in mind, I was going at my full strength, I couldn't afford to hold back even a little bit. That kick I had just delivered was so strong, all windows in a 400 meter perimeter were shattered; even the cars were getting tossed around. Even with that much force, that black armor held firm. Whatever it was, it wasn't obsidian, definitely not obsidian. Goblin kinda laughed at me for my poorly thought out plan, and proceeded to nearly cut me in half with his next swing. I barely managed to duck it, but was swiftly greeted with Goblin's knee, sending me soaring into the air. I quickly recovered, summoned my axe and sword, and stood my ground, letting Goblin come to me. The good news was that I had successfully managed to get him out of the city. The bad news? I still didn't have a clue how to stop this guy.

For three more minutes, Goblin and I went at it like gods; fighting at such speed and ferocity we could've cut through entire armies on our own. Our battle was nothing short of intense, frequently switching from armed, to unarmed combat, and back again. I was doing a lot better this time, using my strategy of slicing off limbs, and trying to search for anything that could give me the edge over this guy; however, I definitely was not without fault. A few seconds after minute three, while I was still in the middle of one of my soon to be trademark punch and kick DBZ combo, Goblin, suddenly glowed really bright with that horrible purple light, and released an extremely powerful explosive wave; if we were still on the ground, it probably would've vaporized most of the city. The blast definitely took a bit of wind out of my sails, but nothing really threatening. Goblin soared after me, trying to finish me with a stab, but I managed to get out the way, only to behold the site of his eyes glowing with that purple lightning that I hate so much. I had no intentions to feel the sting of his thunder again, so I quickly summoned my axe, and batted his head to the side with the flat sides. Goblin was definitely pissed about getting pimp slapped, but before he could do anything about it, I slashed at his face. This time, he blocked my blade, and kicked at me with his oversized horse legs, forcing me to fall back a little. Just like I anticipated, he came howling after me like a total cheese head. It was so easy to counter him, I was pretty sure a child could do it. I leaned back a little, as if preparing to retreat again, and when Goblin poured on the speed, I quickly rushed into a backflip kick, nearly taking off his head with the force of that blow alone. I followed up by hitting him with a hammer punch uppercut, using the leftover momentum from my backflip. That sent him careening upwards with some considerable speed, but that wasn't enough for me; I needed to do some actual damage to this guy. I soared after him, using all of my speed to make sure I wasn't rudely interrupted while trying to waste this fool, and summoned my axe-spear. I got a bit of a flying start, and when I came back, I spun into a Jackie Robinson type baseball swing that pelted Goblin dead in the chest. That sent him soaring forwards, or at least from your perspective he was; he was still moving though jello at my perception. Instead of waiting for the momentum to pick up a million years later, I took the initiative to make my own. Flashbacking a bit, I soared off into the distance about a good mile or so, and after a literal second, I came back around with the speed of a comet. This time I used my axe in it's base form. The spear was good at close range, but at this speed, i'd lose a lot of power on the swing. Anyway, I came in hot, reeled my axe back, and struck Goblin dead center of his back; the blow was so powerful, you could hear the boom from miles away. My speed was starting to decline after that hail mary shot, so I decided to get another flying start upwards, and come back down with a flipping power slice, using my spear; I swear a midst the sonic boom that echoed through the air, I could hear Goblin's armor crack. As he went plummeting down towards the edge of the city, I soared after him, trying to derail him from his crash course, but Goblin wasn't as out of commission as I thought he was. He twisted around, and almost hit me with a death ray from his left hand. I dodged it, and kept up the assault, actually dodging a hand construct that tried to swat me out of the sky. Just as I reached Goblin however, I felt my body being constricted, and had my suspicions confirmed, when I looked around, and saw myself in some type of energy prison. Moving in it was really hard, I could barely get my arms to move even a little bit. Meanwhile, Goblin landed perfectly on the ground, and flew straight at me, this time with an actual good chance of cleaving me in two. Still, i'm as strong as I need to be, so you'd better believe I summoned my axe, raised it over my chest like a crucifix, and blocked Goblin's strike for all I was worth. I didn't go completely unpunished though, and by that I mean I was thrown through at least five buildings, and ended up smashing through something metal, filled with a really disgusting liquid. After a second, I realized that I was in a fuel truck, and to my horror, had probably swallowed a few gulps of gasoline. Don't worry about that, gas couldn't kill me. Why? Because if an entire bottle of antifreeze mixed with bug repellent and an overdose of sleeping pills couldn't do the job, this sure as hell couldn't.

Ok, ok, let me explain. Football was my life. Ever since I was eight, football was the only thing in this world that gave me the feeling like I could fly. I devoted my life to the sport, constantly training, getting better, basically eating, breathing, and sleeping the stuff. I was the first freshman from my high school to ever make quarterback and defensive Junior year, I had already won three state championships, I was already being looked at by scouts to be a quarterback or a defensive lineman for some of the best colleges in the mid-western area. Just when it seemed like my life couldn't get any better, I trucked the opposing team's quarterback in a practice scrimmage, and flew him to the other end of the field. My life was ruined. My chances at being a superstar, destroyed. My reputation, status, booty calls, all down the drain; there was simply nothing left to live for. So yeah, I made myself a liquid poison cocktail, and chugged it for all I was worth. Be in mind, even if the poison didn't kill me right away, the sleeping pills should've put me out of commission in like an hour or less. But after two hours of sitting at my counter, waiting to die, I didn't feel a thing, not even the urge to puke. I tried other ways too. Slitting my wrists, stabbing myself in the chest, even tossing a cinder block on my head. All that accomplished were three disfigured knives, and concrete pebbles getting strewn across the backyard. After that, I kinda calmed down, thought about things rationally, and decided that having these powers weren't exactly the worst thing that could happen to me. All that back sob story was just to explain that I was in no danger of death by ingestion of diesel. Still, I really wished i'd have gotten out of that tanker sooner, cause the next thing I knew, Goblin lobbed a ball of fire at it, and I got caught in a massive explosion, that sent me rocketing into the air, like a bullet out of a gun.

The explosion didn't really hurt, it basically felt like getting slingshotted out of a really hot circus cannon, plus, as you know, anything under 2,000 degrees doesn't even register on my level. At most, the only thing that really worried me was all the smoke blocking my vision. I quickly flew out of the mini mushroom cloud, scanning the air for Goblin; in a way, I sorta did find him. Basically, I heard thunder boom, so I knew what was coming next, and tapped into Blitz Extreme. I scanned the air and the ground for Goblin, and found him hovering slightly where he started the set for a Michael Bay film; then again, this whole fight is like a Michael Bay film. Moving on, I looked up at the bolt of lightning, which resembled a huge ass Kamehameha raining from the sky, summoned my axe, and with all my strength, hit it at it's base. Basically, it was the same thing when I bounced Venom's bolt of lightning back at him, but bigger and heavier, like hitting the world's biggest shot put with an indestructible baseball bat. I managed to derail the blast off it's course, aka me, and send it soaring towards Goblin. I was worried that the blast would do more collateral to the city, but it basically planted itself deep into the ground, taking Goblin with it. Normally, i'd call it a day, say i'd won, and hit the showers, but come on, we all know what was what at this point. I flew after Goblin, soaring down the hole, which cut deep into the sewage system; nasty. I found him after a few seconds of searching. He was kinda in a state of groggy consciousness, which meant that if I kept the pressure on him, maybe I could knock him out. I flew in hot, socked him dead in his face, and hit him with the hardest uppercut i'd ever dealt in my life, sending him up through god knows how many feet of metal, dirt, and concrete. I flew directly up after him, not even giving him half a second to think. I pounded him relentlessly. With every punch, windows shattered, the earth shook, and sonic booms echoed through the atmosphere. I didn't know why, but I felt myself getting angry, for like no reason; still it fueled my punches, and Goblin suffered more for it. After ten seconds of relentless pounding, I decided to pay Goblin back for that little explosion bull$#!+ he dealt me. I tackled him, and rocketed him straight into the air, after quickly scanning the ground for another fuel truck, I found one parked next to a post office; don't know why it was there off all places, but i'll take what I can get. I slammed into Goblin with a 50% cross punch, too hard and i'd send him into the ground again, and sent him crashing into the tanker truck. I followed that up by grabbing the front of the truck, and launching it into the air as if it weighed less than an apple. Once it was safely out of range of the city, I grabbed the nearest car, sure hoped the guy had insurance, and lobbed it in a collision course with the fuel truck; the fireworks were kind of pretty to look at. Again, I didn't trust fate to take care of Goblin, so I soared up after him. Even in the midst of that last explosion, I could see his purple aura glowing in the sky. He was definitely out of his daze, believe me, getting caught in an explosion is a faster wake up than your average can of Monster, but he was still unaware of my location; I decided to make my presence known in the form of a Mach 4 punch to the face, followed by a decapitating sword slice, and throwing his head head as far back as I could. Now was the time. Goblin would be way too far gone to even think about dodging my attacks. I took off directly backwards, and focused on going as fast as I possibly could, by the way, this is not as easy as it sounds, just because it's not running doesn't mean it's not as strenuous as hell. Anyway, the plan was to fly about 3 miles out at top speed, come back around, and hit Goblin with the hardest Meteor Punch, official name, ever. Basically, the plan for taking out Venom, but hopefully without Dragon Empresses trying to destroy the world. It only took about three seconds total, to hit my three mile mark, in fact I went over my mark my a mile and a half. I turned around as fast as I could, turning up the jets to maximum, breaking the sound barrier five times over. In a little more than two seconds, I saw Goblin's still floating body, summoned my axe -spear, and hit him dead in the chest with the force of several bombs. This time I wasn't imagining it, several pieces of his armor started cracking and chipping away; that was a good sign, but I wasn't done yet. I took off directly upwards, and then forwards, reaching the same speed again, and then coming back around for another Meteor Punch, or slash if you will, at the dead center of his back. Again, the sonic boom was deafening, and chunks of Goblin's armor started peeling off like dried skin. And to top that all off, I turned my axe-spear sideways, used it to scoop Goblin sideways, and then, with everything I had left, because I was actually firing on all cylinders, I shifted my weapon back to it's original axe form, and brought it down on Goblin's chest. He plummeted to the ground, somewhere in the middle of the city. I flew down after him, and to my horror, I found his head was reunited with the rest of him; however, he was still out of it, giving me the perfect opportunity to hit him with the perfect flying punch to his chest where the heart was, assuming he still had a heart. The punch didn't shatter armor, but it sure as hell had to hurt, and that was on top of the fact that for ten seconds, at maximum punching speed, I pretty much wailed on Goblin in every way possible, probably brutalizing the poor bastard with about 50,000 or so punches. Hell, the only reason I stopped was because, in a move that reeked of desperation, he knocked me backwards slightly with a small explosive wave, and then managed to hit me with a considerably powerful death blast from his mouth; gotta wonder if he actually had corpse breath due to that. I managed to get up, although i'd be lying if I said I got up like it was nothing. However, the state Goblin was in, made it all totally worth it. As he struggled to get up, the guy was clutching his chest, like he was having a heart attack; but that wasn't the best part. No, the best part was clearly seeing the streams of energy flowing through Goblin, like an X-Ray showing how much his body was trying to keep itself in one piece. All of that energy, all of that undead, underworld energy, was originating from his chest, where the stone probably was. I started kicking myself, and silently whooping at the same time. No wonder his torso was so heavily guarded, it was just like back at the Amazon, all I had to do was do some more mining, get my axe into the soft fleshy parts, and then take the stone away from this punk. I was getting ready to go all out, I was stinging a bit, but if I gave it another 110%, I knew I could pull through; that's when the deal got sweeter.

"_Super-G!" _Thunder Man's voice shouted into my head. "_Where are you!? Are you ok!?, Where's Goblin!?"_

I almost shouted. Wherever the hell Thunder Man and Sunbird were, whatever they were doing, they were done; the cavalry was on it's way!

"_Ok," _I thought back to Thunder Man. "_In that exact order, i'm somewhere in the middle of the city, yes i'm fine, and Goblin's with me, now hurry up and get down here, I could use some backup."_

"_On the way dude! Sorry about the hold up, Sunbird and I were-"_

"_Forget it bro. Tell me the details when my life isn't on the line, just get here ASAP, let's finish this!"_

I kept my gaze on Goblin, who was just starting to look suitable to stand up and fight. As of now, he probably thought he was still set for a one-on-one fight, so I summoned my axe, took up a really cocky hero pose, and smiled at him.

"_What are you smiling about child?" _he asked me while slowly hovering closer to me. "_Do you think me undone, do you think so weak as to that a child can defeat me on his own? I will crush you boy! I will fulfill my duty to my masters! No weapon, no amount of strength, no amount of power can stop me! So tell me, why do you smile as if the day is won, what makes you so certain of your victory!?_

Is it me, or did this guy just not really live up to his full potential. Sure he was menacing enough, plus that whole multi-voice thing was kinda chilling, but he couldn't talk a big game; that's what really sells for a good villain.

"Because," I started. "First off, you're bluffing. Second. I'm not alone anymore!"

Before he could figure out what that meant, I heard Jason's voice telling me to get out of the way. I didn't know what that meant, but I quickly did a flying backflip, and the rest fell into place. Thunder Man and Sunbird were already en route by the time I had finished the conversation with them, confirming the fact that I was alive. By the time I had recovered from my backflip, Thunder Man and Sunbird, were already in the action of double punching Goblin in the stomach. On paper, this would be a seriously stupid idea unless Allyson was Super Sunbird, however, I forgot to mention the fact that my teammates were using their shields, the power enhancing ones, to blast Goblin away with the fury of a Thunder/Sun god/goddess; and yes that was necessary unless you want me to get railed for sexism.

"Thanks for the save guys," I quickly said to them, cause let's face it, even while talking at super speed, Goblin would be up and at em' in just a few, I needed to get these guys up to speed ASA-NOW!

"No problem Super-G," Sunbird said. "Sure you don't mind us cutti-"

"No I don't mind!," I quickly and rather rudely interrupted her. "But long story short, the stone is in his chest, his armor is freaking hard to break, let's get to planning."

They looked at me strange for a sec, but then kinda mentally shrugged it off.

"Ok," Thunder Man said. "You've got the most experience, any ideas from the expert?"

"So far," I started. "The only real option we have is hammering away at his chest, and prying it away from his cold undead corpse. He can use energy blasts and such, lightning strikes, and basically is a walking tank. Sunbird and I can use our strength, no offense bro, and chip away at his armor. At the same time, you two can use constructs and stuff to make the process smoother, we'll definitely consult the Delta Playbook more than a few times for this. Also, slicing off limbs will slow him down a little bit, but don't get surprised if they come back and reattach themselves, they kinda do that. Also, this goes without saying, but i've endangered these people way too much, let's get this fight out of the city before we do anything else."

I must've looked pretty downtrodden, because Thunder Man and Sunbird's faces morphed into the one where they looked like they wanted to give me a hug.

"Guys!" I said, putting on my brave face. "It's ok, seriously, let's just get this over with already!"

Apparently, Goblin was thinking the same thing, because as soon as I finished my poorly strung morale boost, he came charging at the three of us, with a very inhuman flight speed.

"_Guys!" _Jason quickly thought to us, reasserting his place as leader. "_Scatter on my mark. Sunbird, giant hand construct, throw him out of the city. Grant, keep him from regaining his balance, and on my mark, get away from him, let lightning and gravity finish the rest of the puzzle; everybody ready?!"_

"_READY!" _Allyson and I mentally chanted back to him.

We waited for… half a sec, maybe a full one, but when Thunder Man gave the word to scatter, I dashed into the air, Sunbird flew off to the side of Goblin's charge, and Thunder Man started running out of the city. Immediately, Goblin was caught in a giant golden hand, and flung into the air, out of the city; I started helping him along his way. First, I hit him with a few back to back flying punches, although they were kinda sluggish due to my tiredness. Goblin tried fighting back a few times via fire blasts, and wild swings, but even in my state I was having none of it. I simply outstripped his blasts, and kept up the punching barrage until Thunder Man told me otherwise. Ironically enough, when he shouted into my mind "_Super-G, get clear!" _Goblin actually helped me along the way, as he surprisingly managed to hit me with a powerful right cross, followed by a hard backhand that sent me flying backwards; too bad for him, Thunder Man paid him back in the form of a God knows how many volts, thunder strike. Seriously, the bolt looked big enough to tear straight through a baseball stadium, if we were anywhere near the city, it would've been vaporized. Speaking of which, I had just noticed we were in the same big dead wheat field we were when this whole palooza started; in other words, it was all gonna end where it began. If I liked poetry, i'd appreciate the poetic moment in front of me. Anyway, I soared down after Goblin, determined to finish him off with my team.

"_Hey Sunbird?" _I thought to her.

"_Yeah Super-G?"_

"_If it won't be too much of a bother, can you give me a dose of that sun magic, going three rounds wit-"_

Before I could even finish my request, I felt myself heat up a little, and in a quick second, I once again had the power to take on armies, hell, I could take on two with that energy boost. With my power at full strength, I rocketed at Goblin, and started wailing on him, determined to pay him back X10 for that cross shot. I pounded on him for 5 seconds at full speed, avoiding his wild counters, and making his face and body pay for hurting mine. I was about to summon my axe and do a bit of gardening, but then Thunder Man's voice sounded off in my head.

"_Super-G!" _he mentally shouted. "_Launch him back in the sky, we need to wear him down some more, we'll start with hammer time, keep up the hits until or if he ever regains a foothold on the fight!"_

Everything in me wanted to disobey him, and keep the punches going, but he was team captain, and besides, I was getting way too worked up, I needed to take a step back before I lost my head.

"_Gotcha bro!" _I thought back to him. "_Sunbird. You pick up on that?"_

"_Loud and clear, let's pound this creep into the floor!_

Gotta love team enthusiasm! So yeah, I gave Goblin one last cross punch for good measure, dodged a fire blast, and gave him an uppercut so strong, I actually created a crater where I was standing. Again, Sunbird must have given me a special sun dose, because, when Goblin went up, I could clearly see that he wasn't coming back down anytime soon if gravity was deciding this. I quickly flew in pursuit in Blitz Extreme, which was shockingly easy now, and gave him a hammer punch to his back sending him plummeting back down at a fast, but not too fast speed.

"_He's ready guys!" _I thought to my teammates. "Let him have it!"

They didn't need to be told twice. Within a second, two huge sledgehammer constructs, the size of flag goal posts, materialized in the air, and started whacking Goblin around like a hockey puck. At first, I didn't really know what my position was supposed to be on this play, but then, a golden fiery construct materialized right in front of me.

"_What you waiting for?" _Sunbird asked me. "_An invitation?"_

I rolled my eyes and chuckled aloud. I grabbed the hammer, which my hands were just barely able to grip, and joined in the fun. Even without super speed, we kept Goblin immobilized for a good 30 seconds. My job was mainly to fly around and keep him in range of the other hammer swings, just in case Thunder Man or Sunbird knocked him out of bounds. We were giving the guy such a hard time, I almost felt bad for him; then I lost my sympathy after he managed to recover. Basically, when Jason knocked him near out of bounds, I flew after him. I was gonna knock him back into play, but at the last second, his body started to surge. I didn't like that, I didn't like what that meant for my future, so I swung at him. The force of my blow was enough to knock him back several yards, but it was brunted by the emergency shield Goblin managed to create before the hammer fell. I knew right then that the fight was gonna get a lot harder. We had used Goblin as a tennis ball, now he was free, and clearly pissed off. The sky sounded off with the sound of thunder, and the sky lit up like the fourth of July. Lightning came down in every direction possible, and for those of you that don't know, being able to fly sucks when you're closer to the target.

"_GUYS!" _Thunder Man screamed into my head. "_DODGE EM', GET OUT OF THE WAY!"_

"_NO DUH CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!" _Allyson mentally screamed back at him. "_SHOULD WE TRY DUCKING AND COVERING WHILE WE'RE AT IT!?"_

"_KNOCK IT OFF SUNBIRD!" _I boomed. "_WE GOT ENOUGH ON OUR PLATE AS IT IS WITHOUT RAILING EACH OTHER!"_

That calmed things down, figuratively speaking.

"_Look!" _I continued. "_We gotta take him out of the sky, make him fight on land, where he can't maneuver that well! Thunder Man, Sunbird, I'm gonna knock one of his bolts back at him, that should be enough to break the shields. Don't' wait for the flare to die out, as soon as you see his shield go boom, follow it up with dual thunder strikes, well..thunder strike and bolt of light falling fro-"_

"_Just call it a Sun Bolt!" _she interrupted me. "_It's cool, short and sweet. Now let's hurry up and thrash this guy already. It's been a long day, I smell like dead people, and I really wanna take another shower, and eat my bodyweight in BBQ ribs!"_

I couldn't even with that comment, so I shrugged it off, and summoned my axe. I waited for the right bolt of lighting to come along, which oddly enough took a few secs, and when it presented itself, I took a batting stance, hit it with the flat of my axe, and knocked it straight back to Goblin. The impact must've done way more than just break the shield, because other than the blue and yellow bolts that smashed into Goblin after the explosion, all of the purple lightning just stopped flashing in a sudden halt. Goblin hurtled to the ground, creating a massive crater, and you better believe the team and I jumped on him faster than a cat on yarn. As soon as he was able to even resemble a rough standing position, he was blasted with a huge wave of solar energy, sending him flying back. I quickly, rushed behind him, and gave him another axe swing to the back, sending him towards the wolves. Sunbird, smacked him down to the ground with a fist construct, and as Thunder Man came running in, a small lightning geyser erupted under him, sending him spurring a good few feet in the air. I could tell at this rate, the team's attack pattern was severely lacking in organization, so I took the initiative, grabbed Goblin by his feet, and after a brief spin, hurled him into a small hill of dead wheat.

"_Guys!" _I mentally shouted to Thunder Man and Sunbird. "_Team meeting now!"_

Time froze around us as the team and I took a quick nanosec to refine our game plan.

"What's with the hold up Super-G!" said a clearly miffed Sunbird. "Since when can you call for a team meeting? Isn't that supposed to be his job?"

"A good leader knows when to listen to suggestions." said Thunder Man. "Besides we were kinda scattering out there, we need to get in sync with our attack formation."

"Exactly!" I almost shouted, pointing an 'I told you so' finger at Sunbird. "And speaking of which, a good old fashioned Delta Thrasher should do the trick. After he's down, let's keep up the beatings. Thunder Man, buy us as much time as you can, mainly by chopping off anything that looks important. Sunbird, i'm gonna need that Super Sunbird to come out, let's really take the hurt to Goblin, like you said, i'd very much like to eat my weight in artery clogging food sometime soon."

"Amen to that." she responded. "By the way, you two should cover your ears."

Thunder Man and I knew what was sure to follow, so we quickly plugged our ears as best as we could, and even then we still weren't that much better off from the sound of a million Justin Bieber fangirls being projected out of Sunbird's mouth. After the screams had died down, and Thunder Man and I recovered from being ear pounded, Thunder Man summoned his sword, and together, the three of us charged at Goblin, finally united in the struggle.

To be honest, for the first few minutes, things were going swimmingly. I charged straight at Goblin, and started pounding away at him relentlessly. After hitting him with a furious beat down, I fell back, as Thunder Man hit Goblin with a running drop kick, of course, making sure to add his signature lightning bolt shoot out of his feet. Sunbird, at the same, delivered an amazing flying kick to Goblin's head, and even managed to kick it clean off. This meant that Goblin's decapitated body was now flying head on towards me; I simply summoned my axe, and hit him out of the park like Derek Jeter. The team didn't even miss a beat, and we all raced after Goblin's body, determined to damage him even more. Again, it seemed like his body had developed the ability to fight without a head present, but that was barely a factor. I put my axe away, and with Sunbird's assistance, I started wailing on Goblin's chest with enough force to put down a dragon; and believe me, I know first hand what that takes. As Sunbird and I were busy with the front, Thunder Man was busy running around, using his sword to slash and stab at Goblin's legs, arms, and exposed points in his armor. For the most part, this constant attack strategy kept Goblin off-balance. Sure, sometimes he managed to get a wild swing or kick off, maybe an explosive wave if he was lucky, forcing us to scatter and regroup our attacks, but whenever that didn't happen, Sunbird and I were furiously beating him down, while Thunder Man kept his legs, arms, and head, from doing anything stupid, like fighting back. This strategy worked for a good while, but then Goblin managed to bat me away with a stray backhand, and nearly slice Sunbird in half with his sword; which begs the question of was she actually tangible in Super Sunbird form. Regardless, she wasn't ready to take the chance, and created a shield construct to block his strike. Meanwhile, Thunder Man kinda got the hint that the status quo was broken, and quickly sliced off Goblin's arms, and blasted him backwards with his 'Final Flash' move.

"_Guys!" _he mentally shouted to us. "_Demolition Derby, let's go!"_

Sunbird and I quickly got into formation. We charged at Goblin, having to bob and weave through lightning bolts and fireballs, and after a quick punch and kick combo from yours truly, I backflip kicked Goblin under the chin, and Sunbird blasted Goblin high into the air with a blazing geyser of golden flame. We didn't give Goblin a second to recover, and quickly resumed our punch and kick barrage, only now, about 1,000 feet in the air. After a quick beat down, I hammer punched Goblin back to the ground with so much force, Sunbird and Thunder Man actually had to call a team meeting, so that they could actually time the train construct collision; otherwise, Goblin would've created a massive crater, and probably would've caused a small earthquake. As was such, Goblin got caught between two extremely overpowered locomotive constructs, and was temporarily lost in a starburst of sun and lightning. Neither of us actually believed Goblin was down for the count, so Thunder Man ordered the team to regroup for the 'Aerodynamics' play. That was a good move. Not only would it keep Goblin off-balance for a little while longer, but Sunbird and I were already in place for the play, all Thunder Man had to do was tee Goblin up. Half a second later, a huge bolt of lightning erupted out of the ground, delivering Goblin to Sunbird and I. We quickly gave Goblin another quick beat down, in which I focused more on breaking off more and more of his chest armor, and moved out of the way as Thunder Man brought Goblin to the ground with a lightning strike. This time, Sunbird and I raced to the ground, and Thunder Man ordered the team to go back to the Delta Speed Thrasher play. This time though, it didn't seem like Goblin was having any more of it. Sure, Sunbird and I were able to get in a lot of good hits, plus Thunder Man was still doing his thing with the sword, but it seemed like Goblin had gotten a lot faster; maybe all that voltage overcharged him or something. But yeah, all of a sudden, Goblin's wild swings were becoming more and more effective as he started getting some good shots off on me and Sunbird; hell, even Thunder Man was getting less effective in his part, due to Goblin getting more and more opportunities to create more explosive waves.

After trying to keep Goblin more or less subdued for a good three minutes, Goblin pulled and ace out of his sleeve. He managed to hold me and Sunbird back for just a bit, with some skeletal hand constructs. In the half second that followed, Goblin roared like a warlord and the team and I were caught in a massive explosive wave that felt like a high powered tank shooting at rapid fire on every part of my body. The explosion was enough to send me sprawling a good 100 meters or so, and luckily, Sunbird wasn't that far away from my position.

"_Yo Sunbird!" _I thought to her. "_You okay?"_

"_Yeah," _she thought at me, a tinge of grogginess lingering in the air. "_That wasn't so, NOOO!"_

Sunbird dashed off into the distance so fast, it was like she teleported, I wouldn't be able to spot her if she wasn't a living emergency flare. When I did spot her, my heart kinda stopped in both worry and relief. Apparently, Goblin had zeroed in on a dazed Thunder Man, with a huge energy cannon; if Sunbird hadn't caught up to Thunder Man, and raised a barrier around the two, the guy was probably gonna be fried crispy. In other words, thank God for Sunbird's quick reflexes.

"_SUNBIRD, IS THUNDER MAN OK?!" _I boomed in her head.

"_HE'S FINE_!" she responded "_HE JUST NEEDS A FEW-"_

"_No!" _Thunder Man thought to both of us. "_A few is for slow people, all I need is one, half of one. But yeah, I'm ok. Sunbird, repel Goblin's blast back with an explosive wave, we'll follow it up with Delta Cannon. Super-G, if you can run some interference on Goblin's end, that'd be really fantastic bro."_

"_Don't worry about it man!" _I responded. "_I got you covered, just get him set up!"_

Sunbird released her own explosive wave, which was like so much bigger and more powerful than Goblin's, and in the aftermath, a huge Kamehameha-like blast, made of lightning and sun energy rushed at him. At the rate it was going, I half thought that the blast was gonna connect before he even had a chance to recover, but like I said, Goblin was a lot faster now. He quickly got in defensive stance, and released his own counter blast at my teammates. For the record, I gave him as much chance of succeeding in this power struggle as a baby against a Rottweiler. Then again, with the power of the stone…. Eh, whateves, all you need to know is I summoned my axe, hurled it at the mother f*(#&amp;, and after it smashed into his chest with the force of a cannon, the guy was overtaken in the Delta Cannon, which made a really big and satisfying boom. This time, I actually let my mind hold a little hope that the fight was over, I mean damn, that was a pretty solid hit. Surely Goblin was dead right? Right?! WRONG! Goblin floated out of the crater he was buried in. His armor was a lot more damaged than before, in fact, I could practically see some of the glowing purple bulb that was the stone, glowing through his shattered armor, but he was still very much alive, conscious, and probably infinitely pissed off at the thought of getting owned by some random teenagers.

"ENOUGH!" he bellowed. "THE SHINING ONE MUST DIE! FACE ME IN HADES!"

I really had no desire to go there, my preference was somewhere up north if you catch my drift. Anyway, before I could do anything about it, Goblin slammed his fists into the ground, triggering another explosive wave, except this one was weird now. This wave didn't go up and out, rather than under and out, in fact it was more of a small tremor rather than a wave of undead power, seemingly harmless. I wanted to believe that Goblin was just blowing smoke, and that that shock wave was about as deadly as a sleeping kitten, but then the ground erupted, and my worst fears were confirmed. Hundreds of the dead started to rise from the ground in droves. They were all the same size and hideousness of their predecessors, the only difference was, now we were so far outnumbered, it wasn't even funny.

"NOW YOU SEE THE TRUE POWER OF THE SHADOW HERALD!" Goblin kept spouting. "DESTROY THEM MY CHILDREN, BUT SAVE THE GIRL FOR YOUR MASTER!"

"_GUYS!" _I mentally shouted to Thunder Man and Sunbird. "_THIS IS SO NOT GOOD!"_

In response, a huge cannon of lightning shot down from the sky, and hit somewhere roughly around where Thunder Man was, and dissipated just as soon as it flashed; if I didn't know any better, i'd say it was a f*(% you from the big guy himself. But lo and behold, I heard Thunder Man's trademark battle roar, and saw a huge flash of lightning burst in the sea of the dead. What happened next was so fast, I barely had time to catch it. Hundreds of the dead, were being systematically vaporized by huge tendrils of lightning. One second, I was up to my chin in zombie claws, and the next, I was in a circle of char, with the sight of a bunch of lightning bolts branching off of each other like some weird energy tree. At the center of all the ruckus was Thunder Man, the butt of his spear buried in the ground, the point shooting out millions of volts into the oncoming, and at this rate, never ending zombie hoard.

"_YOU THINK!" _he mentally shouted back at me. "_SUPER-G, YOU AND SUNBIRD GO AFTER GOBLIN, I CAN TAKE CARE OFF THE ZOMBIES, IT'S JUST LIKE BACK AT THE AMAZON, I'LL TAKE THE SHRIMP ARMY, YOU TWO REEL IN THE BIG FISH!"_

"_If I recall correctly, we almost died back at the Amazon, you really wanna reminisce about it!? Besides, with all the dead running amok, how's Sunbird supposed to keep at it!?"_

"_It's ok Super-G!" _she said. "_The aura isn't strong enough to knock me out of Super Sunbird, although I wouldn't wager it'll last too long, we need to really take the hurt to Goblin; got a plan?_

"_Keep punchin the $#!+ out of him?"_

"_Good enough, let's go!"_

"_Hold up!" _Thunder Man thought to both of us. "_Let me give you a bit of a head start!_

Before I could even begin to understand what that was supposed to mean, all of the lightning bolts, which were currently still deep frying zombies, changed direction, and alll started to hone in on Goblin. Even if he did have time to raise a shield, I truly doubt it would've been enough to keep out the millions upon millions of volts. As was such, he got the full dose, and was engulfed in a huge explosion of thunder. As if that wasn't enough, Thunder Man still had something left for Goblin. Suddenly, Goblin was caught in a huge tesla sphere, getting constantly blasted from all ends, while simultaneously being lifted into the air. Once Goblin was about 200 feet in the air, give or take, Thunder Man clenched his fists, and hit the kill switch. Again, Goblin was caught in the middle of a huge lightning explosion that was actually kinda hard to look at; and as if he hadn't done enough, Thunder Man reignited the electricity in the air around Goblin, and sent him back to earth in the form of a midair lightning cannon.

"_All done!" _he said after he was finished with his electrocution. "_He's all yours, give him hell guys!"_

And with that, he took off in a really huge bolt of lightning, meaning he was hightailing it, running at near if not his max, to make sure the zombies didn't bother Sunbird and me from honing in on Goblin.

"_Ready Sunbird?" _I thought to her.

"_Duh!" _she thought back to me. "_Let's go!"_

Together, we charged Goblin for what I would be the final time. Goblin locked onto us before we reached him, and threw lightning at us, like I knew he would. Sunbird and I dodged the sparks like slow motion beach balls, but the one thing we didn't account for was getting backhanded away with another skeletal hand construct. This time, Goblin tried taking the hurt to us. Giant purple missile constructs materialized in the air, and it was only thanks to Sunbird's shield constructs that I wasn't blown away.

"Damn it!" I yelled at her. "Now he starts using constructs!"

"It's ok!" she yelled back. "I can run interference, keep them off of you and maybe get in some shots of my own, you just keep hammering him with your fists, it'll be hard to create anything when you're face is getting pounded in!"

"Gotcha!"

I zoomed at Goblin again, summoning my axe for good measure. This time, when a barrage of skull constructs tried to block my path, a giant wave of golden light obliterated them, and left Goblin completely exposed. I hit him in the chest hard with my axe, sending him flying backwards, I quickly zoomed behind him, swung hard at his back, and this time, a geyser of flame erupted under him while he was flying, sending him shooting into the sky. Sunbird and I regrouped for another combined assault, this time with slightly better results. We mixed up our attacks, me attacking relentlessly at Goblin's armor, while Sunbird tagged in occasionally, but was mostly using concentrated bolts of light to keep Goblin off balance. This strategy was kind of working, but like I said, Goblin was steadily improving with this fight. Now, it wasn't really uncommon for him to get in a few good shots on me, plus with the whole construct fighting thing, I was forced to either fall back and restart my attack, or break through the constructs, the latter of which almost got me a date with the wrong end of one of Goblin's swords. From my perspective, it felt like this cycle was going on for a good few minutes, but I could tell in real time, it was probably barely over 60 seconds. I was just about to re strategize with Sunbird about a new gimmick, but Goblin had other ideas. You see, Goblin and I were still locked in an awesome battle, that was 10X more DBZ worthy than the actual show itself. I got some really good punches and kicks on Goblin, not to mention the good axe swings I managed to break in, but when he came at me with a backhand, I made the mistake of blocking. As it turned out, this big boy knew the art of feinting attacks. As soon as my arms were covering my upper body and face, he quickly grabbed me with his free hand, which just happened to be surging with purple lightning, with a little bit of undead fire for good measure. The pain was uncomfortable at most, like a really bad itch all over your body, then again, this blaze/surge would be enough to fry right through your non super bodies, so I couldn't really complain. No, the worst thing was that due to the position I was in, I couldn't move, defend myself, or do anything but wait for Goblin to do whatever. He reeled his other hand back for what was probably gonna be one hell of a punch, but in a quick golden flash, his arm was severed; another half sec, Sunbird's right fist was lodged in his gut, which was followed up with an extremely hot wave of fire, sending Goblin sprawling backwards; in other words, Sunbird may have saved my ass.

"You ok Super-G?" she asked me, and whoa, weird voice.

"Yeah," I responded. "By the way when did your voice get all sexy and stuff."

"Comes with the transformation," she said chuckling slightly. "Ready for another go?"

"I wish, but it doesn't look like we're making any progress, unless…"

The sky erupted in thunder, as Goblin came back on the scene. A huge bolt of lightning cracked the sky, and flew straight for us. Sunbird was starting to freak out, but I calmed her down, summoned my axe, and batted the lightning at Goblin; at least that part of the fight was a constant. Then, as I watched Goblin momentarily fall, I got an idea.

"_Sunbird!" _I thought to her as I flew after Goblin. "_Mini-sun around me and Goblin now!"_

"_Ok." _she calmly thought back to me.

"_Wait, just like that? You have no qualms about wrapping a million degree ball of fire around your new friend and teammate, seriously?"_

"_From what you've been saying, you kinda have a whole 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' type of vibe. Besides dude, my powers won't burn you unless I want them to, it'll probably feel like a summer afternoon in there for you."_

"_Oh yeah, right. I always forget that bit. Anyways, do it, and on my command blow the whole thing up."_

That actually worried her.

"_Are you sure about that?" _she asked me. "_I can protect you as far as being in the mini-sun, but the explosion might be a different thing altogether; You sure you wanna be in it when I make it go boom_?"

"_No choice Sunbird, gotta make sure this creep gets what's coming to him, besides, i'm all invulnerable and stuff, i'll be fine."_

I could tell that she still wasn't exactly 100% on board with the idea of blowing me to Kingdom Come, but she grudgingly agreed, and as soon as I caught up to Goblin, the two of us were engulfed in a miniature golden sun. First of all, it really begged the question of how fast the team was capable of communicating with each other. I mean, time wasn't really slowing down, we were just moving so fast, it seemed like it, so yeah, Sunbird and I had an entire minutes worth of talking in just under .3 seconds. Second, being in the center of a sun was kinda cool. It was somehow both a mix of fire,and some type of magma substance, it was like swimming in a nuclear hot tub. Then again, I was protected from most of the heat; Goblin probably could tell you better than I how hot this puppy actually was. The guy was thrashing around and roaring in pain, I could tell he was trying to get out, but the gravity from this sun was intense, even I kinda felt it. Goblin wouldn't be going anywhere for quite some time, so I was gonna make it my personal mission to make his stay as inhospitable as possible. I summoned my axe and sword, and went to work. Firstly, I slashed off all of his limbs for good measure, and then focused on hitting that chest as hard as possible. The force of my blows were enough to make the mini-sun tremble a little, in fact, I could imagine Sunbird struggling to keep the thing together. But for what it was worth, I was making progress. His armor was starting to chip away little by little, and if the heat attributed to that in any way, then i'll give credit where it was due, but for now, I was going to town. How long was I in that sun? In truth, I couldn't tell you; five minutes? five seconds? It could've been either of which, all I knew was when Goblin actually managed to reassemble himself, and was actually fighting back, rather than thrashing around in pain, that was the moment to pull the plug. See, I kinda picked up on the fact that Goblin was an adapter, like me. The trick was to keep him off balance, and exposed to different environments, so that he didn't have much time to gain any real traction, and as of now, it was time for a field change.

"_SUNBIRD!" _I mentally shouted to her. "DO THE BOOM THING, DO THE BOOM THING NOW!"

Suddenly, the mini sun got really, really, really, really, hot! The heat was definitely above 5,000 degrees, and i'm pretty sure that's like core level hot. Plus, the actual explosion wasn't exactly a love tap. Maybe it was the Super Sunbird form that was responsible for the extra juice, or maybe it was the adrenaline, but the point is, I shot into the air so fast, I might as well have been shot out of a tank. Even through the haze of the pain I was in, I somehow managed to stop my momentum, which was at least Mach 2, and get a quick scan of the area. I managed to spot Goblin, soaring up under me at about a good 50 meters away. You know damn well what comes next. I summoned my axe, raised that mother high and mighty, and brought it down just as Goblin got within range. I hit the guy so hard, I actually had a piece of his armor to hold on to. It was only about a handful, but it was good enough for a souvenir. I raced after Goblin, letting gravity decide this outcome, and made another battle plan with Sunbird.

"_You okay Super-G?!" _she asked me, kinda wanting confirmation that I was alive. "_Did that hurt?!"_

I wanted to mentally scream at her f*(% yeah it hurt, but that would be rude.

"_Nothin I can't shake off," _I casually responded. "_Come on, we got Goblin on the ropes, let's finish it!"_

"_And what exactly do we do now?"_

"_Just pound him into the dirt! I'll stay in close, you keep the constructs off my back, jump in when you feel comfortable. All in all, we gotta finish this now while he's out of it!"_

"_Gotcha Super-G, i'm right behind you!"_

"_Oh, and while we're on the subject, I have this new move I wanna try out!"_

"_Go on…"_

I explained quickly to her what Delta Missile was. Long story short, either Sunbird or Thunder Man charges me up with a lot of energy, and I crash into the SOB who has my attention; in other words, i'm a human missile. Again, Sunbird didn't object too much to the thought of me turning my body into a weapon, probably because she already let me be the filling for a bomb sandwich. Before I knew it, golden fire was blazing around my body, and I was a freaking meteor! Goblin, who was still in the middle of a giant crater, went ten more feet under as I crashed into him, releasing an explosion that was probably visible from an airplane. As soon as the explosion subsided, I went back to thrashing Goblin with everything I had. The guy took half a nuke to the face, he was definitely not in enough shape to fight back, so it was just a straight up slug fest. I immediately went into Blitz Extreme, and started wailing on Goblin with as much power as I could muster between my two fists. Maybe it was because of the huge adrenaline rush in my system, or Sunbird's power still in effect, but my punches were suddenly a lot stronger, and not just stronger, stronger, I mean REALLY FREAKING STRONGER! Every blow had enough force to make the ground shake, and the air explode with sonic booms; hell, if I had kept up the punches for any longer than a few seconds, I would've busted my teammates eardrums, and created the biggest crater to ever be seen in Kansas. Be that as it may, after getting around 1,000 or so good punches on Goblin, I quickly reeled back, and hit him with a powerful reverse kick, sending him shooting through layers upon layers of dirt and soil, creating one hell of a crater once I was done. Sunbird joined me a half a sec later, and we really took it to Goblin. He was definitely recovered now, and as such, put up a bit of an impressive fight, but with Sunbird taking care of the constructs, keeping the energy blasts at bay, and occasionally jumping in to help me x2,000 combo this b!+(#, it was only a matter of time before we had chipped almost every last piece of stone off of Goblins chest; all that was left was a big patch, about the size of my head, covering Goblin's upper left chest; naturally, things started to go south. His body started to surge lightly, like a tesla coil getting warmed up, and little by little, small pieces of his armor were starting to grow back, like skin regeneration but rockier. I tried to rectify this problem by summoning my sword and axe, and going hedge trimming, while Sunbird continued to help me out with her blazing constructs, super duper enhanced fighting strength, and what not. However, even between the two of us, oh i'm sorry 'three'; Thunder Man was still in the distance slashing down zombies, Goblin's armor was regenerating, regardless of how much I hit it, or Sunbird blasted it, hell, even Thunder Man, who I requested a lightning strike from, couldn't even faze Goblin that much anymore. Which brings me to my next point. GOBLIN IS A MOTHER F*(%!N# SUPER SAIYAN! No, hear me out. For those of you that are knowledgeable about the DBZ universe, you know that Saiyans come back twice as strong, after surviving a straight up ass whopping. Goblin was more or less like that. Keep in mind, we've been fighting this guy for at least half an hour, and in that time, he's progressed from crappy brawler, to kind of strategic, much faster, more energy using fighter. Seriously, in the last five minutes of our fight, my combo went from averaging at least 700 hits, to a measly 200. On top of that, his swordplay, whenever he chose to bring out those oversized cleavers, was improving by the second. If it wasn't for Nightcrawler's teaching, which I barely was able to keep up with, the fights with him would be more or less a repeat of what happened with Dragon Empress. Roll this all up in one, lay it out flat, and you end up with at least an extra hour to our fight time, if not an outright retreat in the making; I was having none of it!

_SUNBIRD, THUNDER MAN!" _I mentally shouted to my teammates. "_THIS ISN'T WORKING, WE NEED A NEW PLAN!"_

"_YOU THINK!?" _Sunbird shouted back at me. "_SERIOUSLY SUPER-G, YOU ALMOST HAD THIS GUY ON THE ROPES BY YOURSELF, WHAT EXACTLY DID YOU DO?!"_

"_Remember the whole one-shot from far away thing we used on Venom? Imagine that, just shorter and more frequently!"_

"_Wait a minute!" _Thunder Man jumped into the conversation. "_That's it! That's what we need, another precise, heavy hitting shot, one that'll knock Goblin completely out of the park! Super-G, you did it once with Venom, you think you can do it again with Goblin, just bigger and better?"_

"_Dude of course I could!" _I responded to him as I desperately blocked one of Goblin's downward slashes. "_But i'd need someone to keep Goblin busy for a good second or two!"_

Now believe me when I tell you, this is not the same thing you think it is. Ok, I want you to do something. Count to five with me, ready? 1...2...3...4...5. Now, what I want you to understand, is that in the time it took you two get to that number, I could've flew to Seattle, taken a selfie on the Space Needle, and flew back here without overstepping a millisecond. That's pretty fast, but also slow compared to my terms. Those seconds can drag like entire minutes sometimes, meaning that i'd have to leave Sunbird and Thunder Man on their own with Goblin, and believe me, with the way his speed has picked up, that was not a good idea at all.

"_That's not a good idea you two!" _Sunbird said, backing my thoughts up. "_My Super Sunbird power is ticking down, i'm gonna need to put a lid on it real soon, plus I think it's safe to say that neither of us can really take Goblin effectively, not like the way Super-G can."_

True. Blunt and kinda hurtful, but true.

"_Well what about nuking?" _I asked her. "_You think if I shot this punk halfway to orbit, you could give him a atomic bomb to the face?"_

"_Absolutely not!" _she immediately lashed at me. "_Not only would that be way too much power than I have to dish out right now, but the explosion would carry over way more than what would be considered safe, even for us, what if planes or copters are in the area? I can't risk someone getting hurt."_

"_Ok, ok, I get it, just trying to brainstorm here. Like you said, it's not like I can just take a timeout anytime soon, and this guy's not going anywhere anytime soon unless we put him down, so what do we-"_

An idea hit me so suddenly, Goblin may have well smacked it into my brain.

"_Hold up!" _I suddenly thought to Sunbird. "_You can fly at the speed of light while you're all OP and stuff, right?"_

"_Yeah." _she thought back to me. "_What's that got to do with anything?"_

"_A punch delivered at like 300 million miles per second from around the world has gotta hurt, right?"_

"_Light isn't that fast!" _Thunder-Man interrupted me. "_It's only 299,792,458 miles per second!"_

"_It's called rounding, you nerd!" _I lashed back at him. "_Besides, how exactly do you know the exact speed of light?!"_

"_Ever since I got 100% of my brain unlocked, i've been slowly remembering everything i've ever seen, heard, or learned about, and I use to watch a lot of PBS with my mom when I was 10."_

"_Who the hell watches-"_

"_BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP AND GET BACK ON TOPIC!" _Sunbird screamed into our heads, nearly causing me to jump into one of Goblin's fists. "_SUPER-G, TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, YES. IF I HIT GOBLIN WITH THAT MUCH FORCE, MAYBE IT'D BE ENOUGH TO TAKE HIM DOWN, BUT I'M WAY TOO DRAINED! DON'T GET ME WRONG, I CAN MAKE THE TRIP, BUT IT'LL TAKE EVERYTHING LEFT IN MY SUPER SUNBIRD FORM, I WON'T HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY TO PUT AS MUCH BITE INTO THE ATTACK AS I NEED TO!"_

"_What if I help you?" _Thunder-Man asked her. "_I've got energy to burn, what if I help you out?"_

"_I doubt you can run at lightspeed Thunder Man, even in your fastest sprint, you can't keep up with that."_

"_Maybe not on my own, but with a boost from you, I can hack it at least once."_

"_Huh!?" _Sunbird and I thought to him, because he was making no sense at all, maybe all that running he was doing was affecting his brain.

"_Ha!" _he smugly thought back to us. "_The guy who watched PBS isn't looking so stupid now is he? Well my students, in a nutshell, heat causes molecules to move faster, if Sunbird can give me a jump start on a molecular level, similar to what I did to Super-G the other day, the boost should allow me to reach lightspeed not by increasing my speed, which it will, but by temporarily allowing me to piggyback off of Sunbird's vapor trail."_

"_That's cray Thunder Man!" _Sunbird responded. "_Even if I could do that, the risk would be way too high! What if I cook you from the inside out? Not to mention the fact that Super-G would have to fight Goblin alone for at least a minute before I literally get you up to speed!"_

"_I'll take that chance!" _I snapped at Sunbird. "_Right now we don't have a lot of options, Goblin is making a hell of a recovery, plus at the rate he's improving, he's gonna knock us all on our asses if we don't knuckle down and put him away! Sunbird, i'll be okay, Thunder Man will be okay, but you gotta believe in yourself! We need you Sunbird, we literally can't do this without you; please take the shot!"_

Sunbird thought on it for a good half a sec, but after probably surveying her options hundreds of times over, she eventually came down to the realization that this was our best bet. By the way, in case you didn't notice, we had that whole team pow wow in under a minute, while fighting the forces of death; if anything, that was a testament to our ability to multitask.

"_Ok," _Sunbird agreed. "_I'll do it, but i'll be damned if I leave you alone against an army of the undead, Super-G."_

She clenched her fist, and a mini-sun materialized in the middle of the wheat field. Of course when I say mini, I mean the size of that Epcot golf ball. All of the zombie fodder that Thunder Man was hacking down, immediately got drawn into the flaming death ball, even Goblin was faltering a bit; which made it easier to whack him in the head with my axe.

"_We'll be back!" _Sunbird thought to me. "_Keep this thing busy for me! Oh, and remember to keep him near the ground, some of us can't fly!"_

"_I heard that!" _Thunder Man retorted.

"_Good!" _Sunbird responded.

With that, they took off into the distance, giving Goblin and I some quality time.

Lucky for me, Sunbird was keeping the mini-sun up and running, keeping the zombies off of me, and leaving me with plenty of room to focus on Goblin. Speaking of which, the fight wasn't exactly what I call a success. Without Sunbird keeping the constructs off of me, Goblin nearly pounded me with a barrage of purple constructs. I dodged most of them, and batted away most of the others, but i'm not saying I didn't get a missile or skull blast to the face or the back. I managed to push through that faze, but I knew without Sunbird, this fight would progress from annoying, to deadly; in other words, I needed to change the circumstances.

"What's the matter Goblin?!" I taunted him. "Too scared to fight me without your light show?! I thought you were better than that!"

I knew this would put the seed of doubt in Goblin's head. See, him and I had a little bit of a competitive streak going on here. I was the strongest of my group, he was the strongest in the area, and us strong people have pride, pride that makes us make stupid decisions, and accept stupid challenges; Goblin was no exception, well, at least not now. He snarled at me, lit his fists on fire, and charged me straight on; I charged him with just as much metaphorical fire and ferocity. The two of us clashed, and briefly exchanged punches before I managed to dodge one of his kicks, grab him by the arm, and fling him to the ground; now all I had to do was keep him there. I soared after him, and kept up the fighting, using everything in my arsenal of skills and weapons to keep Goblin at bay. Again, 'at bay' was about the best I could hope for. Goblin was striking back at me with just as much speed, and at least twice as much strength, I was only able to hold him off for about 30 seconds or so, which may have well been like half an hour, before I severely f*(# $ up. I hit Goblin with a furious punch and kick combo, not so much worried about causing damage to his armor, rather than keeping him grounded. This was working pretty good, but then I made the mistake of summoning my axe, and trying to decapitate him with a flail swing; Goblin simply caught it by the chain, and before I could even think about letting go of my end, yanked the chain towards himself hard, taking me along for the ride too. Immediately, I got a mountain breaking shot to the chest, sending me soaring backwards. I rammed straight into another fist that sent me up into the air, and soon after, felt the fury of Goblin's fists and feet in a really extensive barrage.

"_WHAT'S THE MATTER BOY?!_" Goblin taunted me as he was beating my ass. "_YOU CAN TAKE IT CAN'T YOU, YOU CAN FIGHT BACK CAN'T YOU, YOU WON'T DIE BEFORE I HAVE MY FUN WILL YOU?!"_

He planted a blazing fist deep into my face, sending me soaring forwards. I tried to move, I tried to defend, but I was way too numb to do anything, even if my body called for a Timeout, I doubt I would've been able to respond.

"_THIS IS WHAT TRUE POWER IS, CHILD!" _Goblin bellowed at me, as he delivered a powerful kick to my chest.

"_THIS IS WRATH INCARNATE!" _a punch lodged into my chest, actually cracking my armor.

"_AND THIS IS THE FACE OF YOUR END!" _a powerful hammer punch, sending me hurtling into Sunbird's mini-sun.

The sun managed to catch me in it's liquid fire, luckily, Sunbird had it set to it's only kill enemies mode. Through the roar of the golden blaze, I heard the sound of Goblin's thunder, and I knew what was sure to follow. Normally, i'd respond by flying out of the mini-sun knocking Goblin's bolt back at him, and continuing the fight, but I decided to be a bit more strategic than that. I knew that bolt would make this golden globe explode something big, that would give me the perfect cover to make a proper comeback. I waited until the bolt was about a few inches from the mini-sun, yeah, I was waiting for lightning to get into position. Once I was certain the explosion was well timed enough to give me a good amount of cover, I tapped into Blitz Extreme, rocketed forwards, and once the fireworks had gone off, rocketed back to Goblin, giving him a Super-G sized slash to the chest with my trusty axe. From then on, I just went off on Goblin,

hacking and punching away at him with that same mysterious surge of strength I had found a while back. It was definitely the idea of being someone's personal punching bag that got me all riled up, and you better believe I made Goblin pay something serious for that. Sure he tried to come back, occasionally blocking one of my strikes, or dousing me in a wreath of purple flames, but I either dodged his attack, and sliced off his arm, or summoned my sword and stuck it in his throat. Then, I simply went on with my brawl frenzy like nobody's business. I probably could've went on like this all day, maybe even turn the tide on the battle again, but in the distance, something caught my eye. A small bust of yellow and blue. I immediately, hammer punched Goblin to the ground, tapping into as much speed as I could to make sure I didn't mess up the plan. As soon as the guy hit the ground, things went blurry. A huge wave of lightning and sun energy exploded like a bomb, I didn't even have time to register what was happening, but I did know thing; Thunder Man and Sunbird did it, they just did an all around the world punch. I quickly floated down, looking frantically for them. I found Thunder Man, on all fours, wheezing and coughing. Sunbird was a little to his right, lying on her sides, singing something softly, trying to come down from Super Sunbird without going into cardiac arrest. So far, it looked like we were in the clear. That blastwave did way more than shatter Goblin's armor, it obliterated him completely, I couldn't see a single trace of him anywhere, but then again, neither could I see the ominous purple glow of the stone. I was just about to go on a flyby to look for it, but then life decided to bend me over and f*(# my $$!

A little ways ahead of me, maybe half a mile or so, a huge swirling vortex, big enough to completely swallow a city, made of purple energy, spurred out of the ground. At first I thought it was the roar of the winds that was making the deafening sound, but I soon realized, it wasn't the wind that was roaring. The vortex spun wildly for a good 10 seconds, and then gradually receded back into the ground. I desperately wanted to believe that was the end of it, that it was just a last minute dying flare from the stone; it wasn't. A huge dark purple flame shot into the sky, in the shape of a Goblin, as in the Goblin we just worked so hard to put away. He didn't say anything, he didn't roar, screech, or anything, he simply raised his hand, and shot out a dark ball of fire, about the size of the Epcot golf ball. I knew I couldn't knock that back, not even on my best day, which this clearly was not. No, I grabbed Sunbird and Thunder Man, and flew for my life. I darted to the left, making the mistake of thinking the blast was meant for impact only, so I nearly leapt out of my armor when it made a 90 degree turn and went straight for us. I tried to get some momentum going, and managed to dodge the blast for a good few seconds, but I was way out of it, and the thing was way too fast for me to get a good start. Just when I thought I was finished, the death ball exploded prematurely, and engulfed me and the team in one hell of an explosion. Normally, this would be the part where we all died, well, more like Thunder Man and Sunbird, but i'd probably follow them shortly afterwards. Anyway, the three of us crash landed into the ground; I used my body to take most of the impact. I immediately stood up and checked on my teammates. They were out cold. Thunder Man had some nasty scrapes on his face, but they were already starting to heal up; the same could be said for Sunbird, but it was pretty evident that the two were not gonna be going anywhere for quite some time. Well, in times of peril, count your blessings, and the truth of the matter is, with the amount of power surging through that ball, they should've been dead. But that ball exploded because it hit something, some kind of force field. Now that I mention it, I did remember seeing electricity flicker through the air, although I must've hit my head pretty hard, because I could've sworn it was green. I didn't have time to worry about that tidbit of trivia though, I had bigger problems ominously descending from the sky.

How do I put this delicately? Goblin looked like a savage! His armor had been completely repaired, and was surging with purple energy, like some sort of undead Tron warrior. His eyes were burning with purple fire, his talons sharper than ever, and his horns were now ram shaped, which oddly enough made him look twice as threatening. He summoned his new weapon, a gleaming black axe with purple highlighted edges. Whether it was for pissing me off, or just for the sheer irony of it, Goblin decided to use my own signature weapon against me; the thought of it was enough to give me another wind. I stood my ground and summoned my axe, ready to defend my teammates with everything I had.

"_I finally see it now," _Goblin said in a soft voice that sounded like an avalanche. "_The inevitability of it, the way the world was meant to be. This sham, this mockery known as life, must be eradicated. The millions of dead that fuel me, are calling out to you, to everyone who draws breath on this wretched planet. JOIN THEM IN OBLIVION!"_

Goblin charged at me, and my body went into Timeout. I immediately started kicking myself, Dr. Strange said that the stone would pour out millions of dead, once it hit critical mass. The stone must have injected all that energy into Goblin, fueling him with the strength of millions; I was toast. Still, I had to at least try to fight back, at the very least I had to protect my teammates. I ducked Goblin's strike, and crashed into him with my best flying tackle. I took him straight up into the air, which probably wasn't the best idea, and let him go with a hard right hook to the chest. I may have hit him with a pillow for all the good it was doing, because he didn't even flinch before coming back for more. Again, I ducked his wide swing, and summoned my sword to chop off the arm, but I was immediately blasted back with a ball of fire before I could capitalize on that move. Goblin didn't stop for a second, and i'd be dead if I were any slower. He summoned a black sword to go along with his axe, and we both went at it. The good news was that I was just able to keep up with Goblin's fighting, the bad news was, that was all I could do. Sure, I got some good rib shattering axe strikes to the chest, even a few stabs to the face, but at the end of the day, even 1000 of my best strikes weren't gonna do squat against this joker; all it would take was one of his, and i'd be toast. After fighting for a few minutes in mid-air, Goblin got tired to constantly missing, and getting constant love taps from my axe. The sky immediately crackled with purple lightning, and an entire battalion of lightning bolts started to surround me like some sort of electric web. I was having none of it, and immediately dived downwards. I was a lot faster than the bolts that were trying to fry me, but instead of getting comfortable with my lead, I decided to learn from my history, and take the safe road. When I made a sharp right turn, I kept my speed up and cautiously took a backwards glance. Just like I thought, the bolts were following me like flying snakes. Even worse, they were starting to fan out and cut off my flying room, meaning I had to up the zoom zoom by a lot. For a good minute or so, I bobbed and weaved between the various lightning bolts, it got really bad when I found myself having to limbo under the ones that kept doubling back. Finally, after getting pissed at being toyed with, I got an idea of how to break the cycle. Through all of the lightning bolts, I found a small opening that I could fly through, and soared straight at Goblin. I summoned my axe and hurled it at him as hard as I could. He moved his head and dodged like I hoped he would, and then I poured on the speed, reeling my right fist back for a hard flying punch. I knew Goblin knew nothing about my remote control axe, and wouldn't think to catch it, or bat it off course, so you better believe his face was priceless when my axe found it's way to his lower back at about 100mph. I kept Goblin off his game for as long as I could. I brought a hard right to his face, which should've sent him flying, but instead, just made his face vibrate. I didn't focus on that, I kicked him with a powerful reverse kick, which did send him flying backwards at an acceptable speed, and started my combo chain. I tapped into Blitz Extreme and went back and forth whacking Goblin as hard as I could with my axe, making sure to chop off the limbs to buy me some extra time. This bought me about a minute before Goblin stopped me dead in my tracks with a giant shield construct, and then sent me rocketing backwards with a powerful blast.

The fight was many things. Epic, Explosive, Destructive, Epic…but the one word that I feel accurately described it, was long and hard; yes I know that's two words. As soon as Goblin got his balance back, I wasn't able to get him off it again. We clashed in every way possible, routinely switching from weapons to brawling to me flying around trying not to get my ass fried with lightning, while at the same time, trying to find a weak spot to exploit. But for all my speed, strength, and skill, I was only good enough to not get killed. Seriously, for every ten hits I got on Goblin, he did twice the damage with two punches that probably weren't even at full strength. Goblin and I went at it for…well I don't even know how long. Whether it was in real time or Blitz, the fight dragged on forever. Every punch I threw felt like moving my arms though lead, every punch I received felt like a city being dropped on my body; and don't get me started about the lightning and constructs, just don't. I tried my hardest to cut him down to size, and believe me, I fought with everything I had and then some, but it just wasn't happening, especially since I couldn't find that surge of strength that I had awhile back. Still, I pressed on, actually getting a fabulous kick and punch combo off, with a little axe and sword strikes for good measure. It wasn't perfect, but it was doing something. Besides, i had basically deduced that if I was faster than Goblin, I could damage him frequently, without risking getting more damage done to myself; that plan was better on paper. Goblin was only able to absorb so much attacks before he got pissed off, and boy was he ever. On my tenth and final go around, Goblin blocked my punch and kick combo blow for blow, and before I knew what was happening, my vision went dark and purple. All of a sudden, sharp pain shot into every nerve in my body. It was like being cooked alive with fire that happened to be electrical as well, it was agony. I didn't know where I was, but based on the way I couldn't see a thing outside of my dark surroundings, I made a gamble, and deduced that Goblin was taking a page out of Sunbird's book, and had me trapped in some sort of torture sphere. I tried to move, I tried to get out, to be anywhere but here, but it was like reality kept shifting on me, I could barely tell which way was which, much less focus though the pain to free myself. Lucky for me, Goblin did it for me. I couldn't see it, I didn't know it was coming, but after about ten seconds in his torture sphere, I felt the familiar tinge of a high concentrated bolt of lightning strike me from the side. I shot out of the thing like a bullet out of a gun, confused and dazed something serious. I flew for about three seconds before I landed headfirst into familiar asphalt. Damn it, not the city again! I forced myself to get up, I had to move this fight somewhere else, I had already done enough damage, I had to protect the people from this. Goblin came after me with a roar, and I took off after him on foot. This seemed to confuse the big guy, which was all the better for me. As we got closer to clashing, I summoned my axe, and reeled it back, as if going for a throw, this earned a weak, but significant response from Goblin. When I made the throwing movement, Goblin dipped out of the way, and that was a major f*(# up. I willed my axe to extend into chain mode, and it shot out so fast, Goblin didn't even have a chance to move as the axe buried itself in his head. I took to the sky as fast as I could, and threw Goblin up higher; that was when I poured on the hurt. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, but this time, as fast as I could go. I started wailing on Goblin with all of my might, focusing on nothing but beating the guy senseless as I pushed him further and further into the sky. There were times when he blocked one of my strikes and tried for a counter, but I would either get in close and attack his mid section, or summon one of my weapons to make his limb count less. I took this gig up as far as I could, going so high that the sky was starting to look black in the distance. Then, I summoned my axe, decapitated Goblin's head and limbs, and pounded his torso with the strongest hammer punch I had ever dealt. This would put Goblin at about 3,000 mph as his body hurtled to the earth, but that wasn't enough for me. I flew after him, and started beating his chest down with my axe, desperately trying to crack that armor, and get that stone out of him. Apparently, desperation is a great motivator, because with every strike, more and more pieces of his armor were starting to crack and crumble off. I probably could've torn the whole thing apart, but Goblin's limbs decided to reattach to his body, and ruin the fun. And yes, Goblin did not take too kindly to me, violating him like I just did. Still hurtling at 3,000 mph, the two of us duked it out one last time. I got some pretty good shots on him considering the circumstances, but i'd be lying if I said he didn't get a few good jaw busters on me. Soon, I started to see the rough outline of the city again,; not a good sign, Goblin and I were basically a meteor that would've crushed the populace if we made impact. Instead of taking that lying down, I got in close with Goblin again, wrapped my arms around as much of him as I could fit, and moved him at a higher angle, ignoring the punches to the back. Finally, when I was sure that we were no longer a danger to the city, I fell back a bit, went back to combating Goblin, and once we were just a few hundred feet from the ground, I got in close again, hit him across the face with a seismic right cross, and a brutal hammer punch to the chest. This was the part where Goblin was supposed to fall into the grass, but he had other plans. No matter what you say about Goblin, he sure knew how to pull an ace out of his sleeve.

All of a sudden, I felt something large, heavy, and roughly the shape of a hand, slap me hard in the back, sending me careening into the dirt. This time, it was Goblin's turn to go ham on my body. He smashed right on top of me, turned me around, and started beating the hell out of me, and yes, every single punch hurt. I tried desperately to move, to defend, to even cry out in pain, but I was completely immobilized. My muscles were aching, I was out of breath, and it looked like the rest of my team were still out cold. Goblin was screaming something to me as he savagely beat me to a pulp, but I was way too out of it to discern any type of language. Finally, just when I thought he was gonna beat me to death, he picked me up, and backhanded me as hard as he could, sending me crashing into the city; this time, there was nothing I could do to prevent the damage from coming, I heard the thunder, and braced for the huge lightning bolt that that pelted me into the ground. I thought that would be the end of it, that I was dead and gone, but then I felt cuffs wrap around my arms and lift me out of the ground. Goblin was on the surface, waiting patiently for me, his sword drawn in hand. His smile was one of sick triumph as he wrapped his hand around me.

"_A worthy opponent," _he said to me solemnly. "_But not worthy enough. No matter how hard you struggle, no matter how much you fight, death comes for all, and it will always win."_

He reeled his sword back and thrusted it clean through me.

Several things went through my mind as the blade went through me. First, was how familiar the blade felt, as if I had been stabbed by it before. Then it hit me, Dragon Empress, her metal was sharp enough to cut through me; did her and Goblin trade regularly or something? The second thing I thought about was the prophecy of the Norn-Fates. They showed me I would die of a battle with Magneto, so why was this happening now? Was I so bad at being a person, that fate decided to kill me off early? Finally, as Goblin dropped me to the ground to bleed out slow, cold, and painful, I wondered why was I not dead already. Seriously, the blade he stuck me with was big enough to create a downwards line from my chest down to my navel, everything in that area should've been cut clean through, my heart for example. The point i'm trying to make is that I should've died within the moment that blade cut through me; after two seconds of coughing blood and moaning in pain, Goblin also decided that I was cheating at this point. He placed a foot on my legs, and raised his sword for the killing stab.

"_Impressive," _he said, deciding to taunt me further. "_Even in death you struggle mightily. Take comfort in the fact that you died at the hands of the herald of death himself, and if nothing else, the afterlife should reward you greatly for such a mighty battle."_

He brought the blade down, and everything went white.

(Jason's Perspective)

The last thing I remember before getting my lights knocked out, was running around the world with Allyson; that was such a good time, even if it was to take out a death crazed green giant. I didn't realize how long I should've clung on to that memory, because it was the last one I was gonna have for a while.

When I woke up, I was dazed and confused. My brain was hurting, my suit was peppered with holes, and Allyson was lying next to me completely unconscious. The scary part? Grant and Goblin were nowhere to be seen, or at least they weren't until they fell from the sky like fallen angels. I saw Grant get seriously blindsided with Goblin's hand construct, and then everything went blurry in a huge cloud of dust.

"Sunbird wake up!" I constantly yelled at her as I tried to shake her awake.

"Come on!" I continued, my heart racing as I heard an unnatural thunder erupt in the sky.

It was no good, Sunbird was out cold, and the sun was still covered by the storm clouds, she wouldn't be getting any solar first aid for a while. Still, I couldn't let that stop me. Grant needed BOTH of our help, and he was gonna get it. I snapped my fingers, lit a small sparkle of electricity on my finger,and carefully tapped Allyson's chest with it. The voltage pulsed through her body in a flash, and she woke up sputtering and screaming like a horror movie chick. It probably would've taken her a while to gather her thoughts together before we could successfully assemble ourselves, so I decided to speed up the process. I quickly grabbed her face in my hands, and made her stare at me.

"Super-G. In trouble. Fighting Goblin. Let's go!" I said in quick spurts.

That immediately got her out of her spasm, and she focused herself quickly, activated her Sun Form, and we raced to Grant's aid as fast as we could in our weakened states. I could see the electron trial that the huge lightning bolt had shot down from, and saw to my surprise and fear, that Goblin had moved the fight to the middle of the city. Even worse, Goblin was winning. It only took Allyson and I a good half second to reach the edge of the city, and we were just in time to see Grant, lying with a bloody line going down his suit, and Goblin raising a dark, blood stained sword, ready for the kill. I didn't say anything, I didn't even scream, I just felt the huge surge of power erupt in my chest, and let myself give way to instinct. I stopped dead in my tracks, as a huge wave of lightning erupted from my eyes and slammed into Goblin with the force of a train. This wasn't just two streaks of lightning shooting from my eyes mind you, it was like a Kamehameha being ejected from my eyes, big enough to destroy a high school. Goblin rocketed off into the distance, giving Allyson and I enough time to check on Grant. His chest was dripping with blood, the guy was coughing and wailing in pain, the sight of it was enough to make me wanna drop to my knees, and at the same time, gave me enough rage to sustain my will to fight.

Goblin was gonna pay for this.

"OH JESUS!" Allyson screamed. "GRANT! OH MY GOD, OH-"

Allyson started to sing, trying frantically to heal Grant up, but I could see Goblin start to rise up in the distance. She wouldn't have time for it. Not while she was here.

"Sunbird," I interrupted her, making sure to talk in Speed Mode for Grant's sake. "Back to the ship, now! Heal Grant, and watch him . I'll take care of Goblin from here. Go now!

"But-" she started to protest.

"NO BUTS! GRANT IS DYING, GOBLIN IS IN A FRENZY, YOU NEED TO GET HIM AND YOURSELF OUT OF HERE! DON'T ASK ME TO COME WITH YOU, WE CAN'T LET HIM HAVE THE STONE; I WON'T LET HIM HAVE IT, NOW GO!

"JASON PLEA-"

"GOOOOO! NOW! SAVE GRANT, GET TO SAFETY, ALLYSON PLEASE!"

I was honestly scared; this was more emotion than i've ever portrayed in my life, and I couldn't even tell what I was feeling, although I knew anger and fear were in there somewhere. The look on my face must've really portrayed that, because I saw the fight in Allyson just die on the spot. She bowed her head, and started to cry a little. I tried not to feel bad about that, but this was the second time i've made her cry in under a week; maybe I was the monster she thought I was.

"Beat him Jason!" she said through her tears. "But you better not die, you hear me?!"

She pressed the blue button on her watch, and did the same for Grant's. In a flash of blue, the two were gone without a trace, leaving me and Goblin to parley. I could see him flying at me as fast as he could, probably licking his chops at the thought of this easy meal, I mean who was I to Grant right? I created a huge shield construct in front of him, it cracked under the pressure of his charge, but it was enough to derail him a bit. I followed that up with a lightning geyser, sending him shooting upwards, and then bringing him back down with a lightning strike from above (in addition to a massive war scream). Keep this in mind, the last time I tried to take Goblin down with a lightning strike, he shrugged it off like a blanket. Now, my lightning strike had tripled in both size and power, if it were any bigger I would've destroyed more than I bargained for. My brain was telling me to dial it back, to cut down on the power and take it slow. I told my brain to shut the hell up and let me be. My body was surging with power and adrenaline, I could literally feel my molecules vibrating faster, doing weird things in my body. Now was not the time for dialing back, now was the time to go all out, and go for the kill. I ran towards Goblin, and hit him with a massive flying kick, shooting a lightning bolt out of my foot, and on the recovery, created a huge sledgehammer and nearly knocked him out of the city. I made sure to finish the job by giving Goblin a first class seat on the lightning train out of the town until we were once again halfway from the city; now I could really go all out without worrying about civilians. Goblin got up, dusted himself off, and flashed me with a really surprised look, like he was surprised that even lasted this long; I was infuriated, stray bolts of lightning just bouncing off of me absently.

"_Humph," _he said. "_Crush one gnat, another one takes it's place."_

He was gonna pay for that one.

"_I will tell you like I told your friend," _he continued. "_Death comes for all, and death always wins, surrender now, and let me give you the sweet gift of oblivion."_

"Death ain't $#!+" I responded.

Goblin roared and summoned his axe.

"_You insignificant, impudent, speck of dust and grime, I will see that you suffer for all time! Your death will be but a footnote in my campaign for universal carnage. I will destroy you, then the Shining One, then everything that draws breath on this mockery of a planet. DEATH REIGNS SUPREME OVER ALL, PREPARE TO EMBRACE IT!"_

Goblin raised his axe and flew at me like a missile. This guy beat my best friend savagely, and nearly killed him. He kept making threats against Allyson. He was threatening to kill everything on the plant. Worst of all, he pissed me off. I summoned my sword and counter charged with my own roar. No matter what it took, no matter how long it took, I was going to kill him!


	12. Chapter 12: Birth Of The Storm-Lord

**Chapter 12: Birth Of The Storm-Lord**

I charged at Goblin for what felt like (and probably was) a millisecond. Before we clashed, I used the momentum of my charge to jump into a side flip over him, and while in midair, create a giant hand construct around him. Once I landed, I made a throwing gesture, and my construct did the same, throwing Goblin a really long ways away. This was not for damage purposes, no this was to get a small opening to bring myself up to fighting condition. Yeah, despite my reignited drive to fight (mostly based on vengeance), my body wasn't exactly up to par with the memo. Sure, I had enough energy to burn, and I wasn't terribly out of it, but the thing is, running around the world will take it's toll on you. And yes, because you probably wanna know what it feels like i'll tell you. Long story short, kinda awesome. Your adrenaline is going so fast, it's like you're lost in energy. The feeling of running as fast as I could, with no restrictions whatsoever? Indescribably magnificent. Plus, considering the fact that it all happened in under a second, your brain and body gets the feeling of being faster than time, and at the same time trapped in it; yeah, it's not something you can accurately describe, but I gave it my best shot. Anyway, the very nanosec that I had to myself, I wasted no time, and patched myself up. I focused on making the electricity in my body explode inside of me, which normally took a bit longer for the process to get started, but this time it was near instantaneous. My body was engulfed in the surge, and I felt an immediate boost of strength to my legs, chest, arms, even my heart and lungs seemed to get a piece of the action. Like normal, I got an immediate burst of strength, especially in my legs, and I felt like I could run laps around the world (I already did, but not the point), lucky for me, the only thing I had to do was kill the overpowered mongrel that savaged my strongest team member like he was a baby; ain't life amazing?

Speaking of which, as soon as I was done with powering up, Goblin had recovered, and was on his way back at about 1,000 mph, which by my standards, was still very slow. In response, I shifted into Speed Mode, and tried for a new trick I had picked up on during the big zombie battle. I held my hands out, focusing on the electrons that saturated the air (especially since I was involved). As soon as I honed in on the subatomic grid, I clenched my fists and commanded the little punks to wake up, and help me kick some ass. From your perspective, this would be like going from a cold shower, to blazing hot in the blink of an eye. The electricity crackled and came to life so suddenly, it would've been like walking into an invisible electric wall. For me, the opposite was true. I could see, if not sense the sudden air heat up, the sparks crackling to life and joining together, evolving from light taser tap, to straight up this $#!+ can kill lots of people, levels. Anyway, as soon as I gave the air a jump (which again, was so fast, even Goblin couldn't perceive it), I slashed my hand though the air, and a bolt of lightning materialized and tackled Goblin from the side, drastically knocking him off course. I followed this up by creating a bunch of 'now you see me' lightning bolts, and playing a small game of pinball with Goblin. I knocked him backwards, forwards, sideways, whatever, all at the same time generating about several hundred million volts of lightning in an area that barely encompassed the area of a standard track &amp; field. Finally, to get the ball rolling, I knocked Goblin on a collision course towards me with another surprise bolt, and when he got within a few feet of me, I blasted him with the biggest Final Flash i've ever made. Of course I knew I wasn't really making any significant process, this guy survived a fall from God knows how high, took blows from Super-G, and outlasted Allyson's Super Sunbird; plus he was jumped up on an insane amount of undead energy. I wasn't stupid, I knew I wasn't doing squat at this point. However, the air was super electrified now, meaning that the area was pretty much my playground, where I could do to Goblin what I wished, so long as I could think it up; this was gonna be fun.

Goblin immediately got up after taking a Final Flash point blank (which kinda disturbed me), and soared after me again, as if charging me head on would produce any different results the second time around. I simply focused on the residual energy in the air, made a swiping motion with my arms, and tried not to bust out laughing at the sight of Goblin getting punted into the distance by a giant lightning sledgehammer. That was the point where things started to amp up. As Goblin was careening backwards, I shot him up into the air with a powerful lightning geyser, and before he could even think about recovering, I launched a barrage of giant rocket, arrow, and sword constructs at him. The constructs caught him off guard, and exploded in his face, but that's pretty much it, nothing of game changing quality. I followed up the weapons explosion by yelling really loud, and summoning a Mega Lightning Strike, one that completely engulfed him, and should've at least dazed him a bit; due to the sudden activation of my Speed Sense, that clearly was not the case. Goblin rushed out of the voltage, glowing with the undead white hot undead hatred of…something really bad? Anyway, he was big, fast, pissed, and on a collision course with me, so I rolled out of the way, summoned my sword, and got ready for what was sure to be one hell of a struggle. In response to my construct beat down, Goblin roared, and blasted at me with a lot of his own personal (but really unnatural) lightning. Multiple tendrils spread out in many different directions, similar to my Fulminata Blast, but they were too big and slow to be too much of a threat to someone as fast as me. I simply took off straight the middle of all the voltage, bobbing and weaving through the lightning that definitely could hurt, if not kill me, and vaulted over Goblin, with a huge twisting somersault. On the way down, I tapped into SMS, slowed down my fall, and sliced Goblin's head clean off with my sword; which wasn't as easy as it sounds, maybe Grant's strength played a factor, but for me, it was like cutting through a wall of fleshy concrete. As soon as Goblin's head was chopped off (and promptly kicked into the distance), I switched my sword to spear mode, charged it with a $#!+ ton of voltage, and went back to the primitive, but all I could really think of, plan of whacking Goblin's armor until it broke. Hey, it's all I had!

So this plan (or at least the first part of it), worked for a good three seconds before it outright blew apart, nearly getting me killed. I slashed at Goblin as fast and as hard as I could, recycling the momentum from my most powerful slashes, making sure to balance out speed and power, all while at the same time thanking God for making Allyson such a good teacher. And yes, the slashes weren't really doing much better at breaking Goblin's armor, although I did manage to chip off a few finger sized slivers of…definitely not obsidian; obsidian couldn't Get through Grant's skin. Moving on, something bizarre happened in the final moments that I was trying to break through Goblin's armor. Remember, I was already in SMS, meaning that at minimum, I was already at 55% of my maximum speed, and even that was way faster than you could even think about comprehending. While in SMS, my Speed Sense actually went off. I repeat, while I was already faster than lightning, my Speed Sense, which warns me about things I might have a blindspot to, went off! Goblin's body jerked so fast with a powerful right fist coming down to smash me, I actually would've died if my immediate reflexes didn't kick in, making me dash out of the way. Goblin's body didn't stop there (he wouldn't get his head back for another five seconds), and we kinda played a game of tag, only I couldn't afford to be it. I ran forwards, getting some distance between us, although he wasn't that much behind, and when I was certain enough that I could pull it off, I focused on the electrons in the air (which I will call the Power Grid), snapped my fingers, and railed Goblin a half a mile to the side with a surprise bolt of lightning. Doing this helped me realize something, until now, I haven't been thinking hard enough about creative ways to use and mix up my powers. I mean, Sunbird said that she learned how to use the light in the air to create her constructs rather than her own power reserves, why didn't I think of that? Plus, now I didn't have to worry about shooting lightning or creating constructs while running at super speed, because as i've explained it before, using both powers at once puts a cap on how powerful each of them can be utilized, my body simply can't handle using both powers at once without suffering a few drawbacks. Don't get me wrong, I was getting fast enough to where I would soon be able to do both without having to worry about staying fast enough to not get hit, but for now, the Power Grid was a very welcome, very soon to be frequently used tool. So skipping back to the fight, after I got the drop on Goblin with the surprise bolt (I'll call them Phantom Bolts), I quickly doubled back, and started to take the hurt to him again. While maintaining SMS, I created two giant fist constructs from the Power Grid, and kept circling around him while my Thunder Fists kept pounding him relentlessly. I used the fists for more than just straight up punching, again, I was just starting to think outside the box. Instead of just constantly using the fists to only hit one section of Goblin, I had them constantly flying around him, punching him in the back, front sides, even holding him down briefly while I showered him with thunderbolts and lightning strikes; oh and by the way, none of them were used from my own energy reserves. Again, this only provided a temporary fix, and Goblin was back to his old tricks within ten seconds, except this time, he put a bit more torque in his game plan. He created a light body shield around himself (meaning he was at least feeling some of the bite of my attacks), and created a really big sword construct to whack at me, while at the same time, blasting at me with a bunch of fireballs. Most of this situation was rectified with speed alone. I used the Power Grid to make instant shield constructs in front of the fireballs, and created my own giant sword to block Goblin's strike, which was like blocking the force of a falling flag pole with your mind. At the same time, I hit Goblin in the back with a Phantom Bolt, causing him to stumble, but not fall, and managed to whack him hard with my sword, sending him flying into the distance, or at least it was supposed to. You see, that body shield must have been way overpowered, because even with a really good swing from a sword that contained enough voltage to slice clean though a skyscraper, Goblin barely flew back 100 meters, before he came back with a vengeance. He tried slashing at me with a huge downwards, cut. I would've blocked it, and engaged in a voltage construct sword fight, but then I felt something coming for me from the back. I let my sword construct dissolve, and dashed out of the way, not sure about whether or not to block the attack with a shield. As soon as I was in the clear, I took a quick glance at the object before resuming my sprint. Just like I thought, Goblin was trying to blow me away with his own surprise bolt (which now that I think of it, truly deserves the 'Phantom Bolt' title, given the circumstances of his power), but my powers sensed it. If nothing else, it confirmed the fact that while Goblin's electrical energy wasn't natural, it was close enough to my own to where I could detect it, know it wasn't gonna charge me up, and avoid it. Not too much of an advantage, but at least it rendered one of Goblin's weapons useless. That being said, the alternative wasn't really all that great. Goblin tried pounding me into the dirt with his huge sword construct, while at the same time, throwing a relentless barrage of fire, and skull constructs (kinda like Shang Tsung), forcing me to run around frantically without getting much of a chance to go back on the offensive. Don't get me wrong, I tried striking him left and right with as many Phantom Bolts as I could, but not only was he used to the impact, making them next to useless, he had already picked up on how to do the same trick himself, and apply it to better use. For example, after dodging Goblin's relentless power onslaught for about a minute, barely getting any attack time myself, Goblin managed to pull the rug out from under me by creating an entire circle of his own Phantom Bolts around me, each one of em' big enough to disintegrate a school bus. I couldn't block an attack like this with my force fields, nor did I have any space to run between any of them, so I did the obviously stupid, but again, had no choice but to do thing, and jumped as high as I could, erupting a lightning geyser under me for good measure. My Speed Sense went off so fast and hard, it was like getting punched in the head with a steel fist.

I flipped in mid air, and to my horror, saw that Goblin had made an entire wave of undead purple fire erupt out of the ground, which was surging at me like a tidal wave. This was genius, not only did Goblin get me stuck between a rock and a hard place, he had pretty much cut off any and all chance I had of recovering; again, I couldn't fly. Still, i'm never one to go down without a last minute save, so I immediately went to work. In a fraction of a second, I created a voltage body shield around myself, and for good measure, summoned my shield, and created a thunder barrier around myself. After that, there was nothing left to do but take what was coming. The impact of the tidal wave, was so hard that it completely shattered my thunder barrier within the first few seconds of impact. Hell, if it wasn't for the shield Mrs. Kennedy made for me, the tidal wave would've ripped through my body shield, and burned me into a crisp. As was such, I was completely crouched under the shield, so it took most of the oncoming damage, and I fell to the ground hard, my body shield only barely a flickering aura, but at least I was still alive. That wasn't very much of a comforting fact, considering how fast my Speed Sense went off. Immediately below me, bones, as in honest to goodness skeletal bones, in the shape of large jagged spears, started to jut out of the ground in really slow motion. The bones had already touched my armor, which held up amazingly, but if my head was any closer to the dirt, it would've been impaled. Instead of that happy picture, I managed to move my head straight up, and took a quick nanosec to survey the battlefield. My first thought was to get out of the bony area, and refocus my attacks on Goblin, but the problem was, the bone spikes were protruding out of every square inch of the wheat field (and yes we were still in the wheat field), I couldn't go anywhere if I tried. Even worse, the bones were starting to mutate even further. I wasn't in any immediate danger from my perspective (look up how long a nanosec is), but I could see the bone spikes jutting out smaller bone spikes from their sides. In other words, I was trapped in a bone field, that would eventually stab me, if not provide the perfect prison for Goblin to kill me; I swear I think i've seen something like this in some sort of horror film, can't exactly place it, but I know i've seen it somewhere. So yeah, getting penetrated with bone spikes growing out of a wheat field (that's art and poetry, and even in the face of certain death I can sorta appreciate the paradox), was not on the top 10 of my bucket list, so I decided to have none of it. I slammed my fist into the ground, releasing an electric shock wave that cleared out all of the bones within a five meter radius, and created a barrier around myself. I didn't trust the bones to just stop growing just because I gave the ground a jump, so while maintaining the barrier, I made the ground in my area surge violently; if any bones were still supposed to keep growing, they weren't gonna grow under here. As far as what my plan was after this, no idea. I mean, it's not like I could trash the entire wheat field (although that wouldn't be a bad idea), no the only thing I could do right now is play it safe, and wait for Goblin to make his next move; damn you wouldn't believe how that almost got me killed! Apparently, summoning the field of bone spikes was not Goblin's endgame, no no no, it was only the beginning. As if a huge hurricane erupted under the ground, the thousands upon thousands of bone spikes flew into the air, and created a sort of whirlwind around me; the bones were so many and so thick, I couldn't even see Goblin in the air anymore (although I could sense him just fine). Still, even without seeing him, I could just imagine his face right now. His sick smirk probably licking his chops at the thought of watching me die long and slow; that anticipation must have been way too good to resist for long, cuz after about two seconds, the bone whirlwind stopped for a second, and then homed in on me like endless missiles.

To say that the barrage was intense, wouldn't do justice to how f*(# I was. The bone maelstrom beating against my barrier felt like half ton shards of glass consecutively pounding the soon to be destroyed puny electric force field. Now that I thought of it, Goblin must have been enhancing the bone shards with his Hades magic, cuz bones, no matter how numerous, do not impact this hard. I was thoroughly trapped, no other options except for trying for a Mega Lightning Strike to knock Goblin off balance, and I was not in the best position to concentrate on anything other than barely surviving Goblin's onslaught; yeah, the notion of 'survival' took a rather hard left after a few seconds. Apparently, Goblin was just starting to get used to the whole 'power of three million souls' thing, because I felt something similar to what was probably a battleship being dropped on top of my barrier; the sheer impact alone was almost enough to break through my barrier, only my will kept it up. Oh, but Goblin didn't stop. For the next 10 seconds, lightning, and bones worked together to try and kill me. I kept the barrier up for dear life, but it was starting to hurt both my mind and body, I couldn't keep this up much longer, I had to strike back somehow. I closed my eyes, and focused on accessing the Power Grid again. Like I said, even though I couldn't see Goblin, I could sense him just fine. Right now, he was about 400 meters away from me, in the air, protected by a whirlwind of bones; guess he wasn't blind to the fact that I could strike him in the face with a lightning bolt whenever I got around to it. Still, this was something I could use to my advantage, especially for the trick I was about to attempt. I focused on four separate points below, above, and to either side of Goblin's bone whirlwind shield. I focused as hard as I could on the Power Grid, making it build up as much power in between those four points as possible. The process took about a good thirty seconds to complete due to both the strain of charging a massive attack, while at the same time, maintaining the very shield that was keeping me alive, which was also under attack by what felt like a million tanks shooting at it; also, I had to make sure the attack was strong enough not to just hit Goblin, but to make him hurt enough to get him off of my back. Still, even under these conditions, charging up the attack wouldn't be so strenuous, if Goblin wasn't in my head! Basically, after about five seconds of charging my attack, Goblin started speaking in my head, which not only was annoying as f*(#, but also felt like a black hole screaming inside your head; I dare you to try and stay 100% focused on what you're doing then.

"_Why do you persist child?" _he asked me in an ominous voice that reverberated around every inch of my head. "_Your friend, who had the strength of a god could not defeat me, so what makes you think you could? Just give up, desist this pointless struggle against the inevitable, and accept whatever afterlife awaits you; this fight is no longer yours."_

He had a point, I didn't want any of this. This whole hero thing, this wasn't for me. Gods, magic, monsters? They were only good when they were in the books, not when I was involved. Why not just let go, end the pain? Mom…. Well Grant and Allyson….. I mean...they'd be fine right? No! I had to shake Goblin out, he was manipulating my thoughts, poisoning my mind, if I didn't snap back soon enough, I would've dropped my barrier and abandoned my attack altogether. Mom, Grant, and Allyson, I had to hold on to them, keep them in my thoughts. They made me strong, they gave me purpose, and right now, my purpose was to personally escort Goblin to the gates of Hell.

"_Shut the hell up!" _I thought back to Goblin with as much poison as I could fling at him.

"_You wish for me to be silent?" _Goblin asked me in a voice that had an unnatural amount of surprise in it, like I was missing out on some big revelation. "_Why would you not like to hear my gospel of death, boy_? _Do you think yourself above such truth? Or are you simply ignorant to it?"_

20 more seconds, all I needed was 20 more seconds; until then, I had to endure Goblin's monologuing.

"_Well then," _he continued. "_Listen to me now, child of lightning. After I kill you, I will continue my mission to extinguish the light of the Shining One, she has been deemed a threat to the plan laid out by my masters, and must not be allowed to live. After she has been dealt with, the heroes of this world will systematically fall by my hand, for the longer I exist, the more my power, the more my rage grows; even the mighty Thor will not escape my wrath!"_

Ten more seconds.

"_With them put down like the rabid dogs they are, I will bring an age of darkness and despair across this world, the likes of which have never been seen! The dead will rise and consume the flesh of the living, the sun will be darkened with a layer of everlasting death, every living thing that grows from the earth will wither and die, the waters will become red with the blood of the creatures of the sea, and when I have truly brought all life to it's knees, I will spread my influence across the entire universe! PRAISE TO THE-"_

Time ran out.

I yelled at the top of my lungs, and the ground and sky erupted. Four huge pillars big enough to completely swallow skyscrapers rammed into Goblin from four sides. Because he was surrounded by his bone whirlwind, Goblin didn't see anything coming, so it was way more satisfying for me when he got a billion volts of lightning rammed into him from the four corners of the earth. All the bones around him crumbled to dust, and the maelstrom and thunder strikes that were barraging my barrier stopped suddenly (which felt like entering Nirvana). In the aftermath of the near atomic explosion, I reignited the electrons in the air, and trapped Goblin in the godmother of all tesla spheres. The thing was about the size of that huge Ferris wheel in London, filled with so much juice, it could've easily powered the entire east coast of U.S.A., and you better believe I made Goblin suffer. I punched downwards, and a huge bolt of lightning shot down and blasted him. I uppercutted the air and a lightning bolt tackled him from the bottom; you get the picture. I kept Goblin in a tesla torture combo for as long as I could, kinda getting the gist of how that guy felt when he was using the shadow boxing feature on Real Steel. I kept Goblin going in a continuous erratic cycle of pain, probably hitting the guy with at least 50 bolts of lightning per second (I may have tapped into Speed Mode to speed up the punching), and definitely putting a few dents in his armor. Unfortunately, this little orb of pain couldn't last for very long, not because I was incapable of keeping it together, but because Goblin eventually managed to put up a barrier around himself, and I was not keen on wasting time and energy on shield breaking. I decided to cut my losses, clenched my fist, and made the tesla sphere implode on top of Goblin, making one hell of an electric starburst (seriously, if I were any closer to the city, I might've vaporized it). I didn't think the blast would kill Goblin (no chance in God forsaken Hell), but I at least thought, or hoped, that it would at least take a bit of the wind out of his sails. I was not counting on the explosion to merely piss him off, and make him rocket towards me, roaring like a lion.

Normally, this would be the part where I panic and start running, but I had had enough of that. As Goblin started shooting bolts of lightning and fire at me, I tapped into Speed Mode and dodged them all, without moving too far from my general area; this time I was gonna let the fight come to me. As soon as he was about ten meters away from me, I snapped my fingers, and a bolt of lightning shot of of the ground, uppercutting Goblin under the chin, and adjusting him to where he was more parallel to the ground. Once he was in position, I vaulted myself upwards with another lightning geyser, and did a twisting flip (like Olympic level), and landed perfectly on Goblin's back. Before he could even think about throwing me off, I summoned my sword, and stuck it deep into a small, but vulnerable sliver in his armor. He roared loudly, but that was only the beginning of his trouble. I roared, giving Goblin a run for his money, and a split second later, a huge blast wave, big enough to swallow the empire state building (i'll refer to it as the Zeus Cannon), rained down from the sky, and swallowed me and Goblin like an appetizer. If he was screaming in pain, I couldn't hear it, although I do know for a fact that he had to be hurting a lot. You see, I didn't stick my sword in Goblin's back just for a Gladiator/Spartan epic move. No, metal is one hell of a conductor, and this Zeus Cannon, although doing mostly external damage to Goblin, was getting a portion of that voltage being transferred through the sword, and into Goblin's internal areas. Dunno how this affected the big man (or even how his anatomy even worked as of now), but it had to be doing something serious. As soon as the Zeus Cannon dissipated after about five seconds of steady impact, I was sorely disappointed to see Goblin immediately turn over, nearly battling me away with a backhand, and upon missing, blast me away with lightning from his eyes. The blast knocked me ten feet into the air, and it hurt like hell; also, it did something weird to me. No it didn't make me turn to a corpse, or dissolve my flesh, again I have magic immunity, but I did feel like a microwaved hot pocket gone wrong; meaning the blast itself burned, but I felt like I was freezing inside. Still, that was a very minor complaint compared to what soon followed. Even in mid air, my Speed Sense kicked in, and when my vision focused, I nearly leapt out of my skin at the sight of Goblin's axe, about two inches away from my chest. On a reflex, I immediately summoned my shield, and when the impact came, it was dulled by at least 50%; still the impact was enough to send me rocketing through the air at like 300 mph.

The rush was incredible (yes I know I was in danger, but still), and would've been even more so if it wasn't for the fact that it was Goblin who was the source of it. I quickly put up a barrier around myself as Goblin came rushing for another attack, pretty much getting the gist of what direction this fight was taking. Goblin rushed at me with heavy attack after heavy attack, each swing almost being the one that broke the camel's back (seriously, I had to refresh the shield every time he hit it). One thing was apparent though, Scott City was going bye bye; wherever Goblin was taking me, it was far away from there. Don't get me wrong, I tried to put up a fight under my shied, actually getting off a few poor lightning strikes that Goblin easily avoided. Hell, I launched a few missile constructs at him, and was seriously considering creating a Combat Avatar to help break the chain, but after the 20th consecutive hit (yes, he got that many shots on me), Goblin decided to mix things up a bit. He gave me one last power swing for good measure, and then fell back slightly, as if letting gravity decide the rest of the outcome. My first thought was to retaliate with a lightning strike, or construct barrage, and I probably would have, if it wasn't for the huge energy signature I was picking up directly over head. Son of a b*+(#, that bastard was gonna use my own trick against me! I slammed my foot against the inside of my barrier, and launched myself backwards with a lightning bolt out of my foot, while simultaneously dropping the shield. I shot out of range just as Goblin's Zeus, or should I say Hades Cannon, dropped out of the sky and planted itself into the road. I was safely out of the way, but if only that was the best thing that could've happened. The Hades Cannon hit a few cars in the parking lot, setting off a chain explosion that trashed a lot of cars (thank God nobody was in them). Speaking of which, I took a quick pause to take in my surroundings. I definitely wasn't in Scott City anymore (obviously), but the place was definitely reminiscent. To my left was a huge stack of apartment buildings, to my left, some type of theater that had the word 'State' on it in lights. To the back and front of me, I could see different types of buildings, winding roads, and lots of traffic and locals; in other words, this place was definitely bigger than Scott City, but that also meant that there were more people to hurt, more collateral to worry about. I tried to suppress that thought, as I summoned my sword again, and charged Goblin in a desperate attempt to keep his attention. I ran around Goblin as fast as I could, stabbing and slashing at his exposed points, like his knees, cracks in his armor, and if I could get a good shot, the arms. Goblin fumbled about trying to hack me with that axe of his (almost succeeding a few times), but was only swiping air. Still, this wasn't exactly effective to what I wanted to accomplish, which at this moment was just to give any civilians in the area a chance to get out; that $#!+ doesn't really work when you're fighting faster than people can run. My game of 'let's see how long you can poke a bear till he kills you' game continued for about another two seconds, and then Goblin brought it to an abrupt halt. He slammed his fist into the ground, releasing a huge shockwave that tore through the roads, crumbling them like asphalt cookies, and causing tremors so severe, the buildings around us started to collapse. I couldn't let this happen! I could literally feel the static fields of everyone trapped in those buildings, at least a couple hundred at minimum, even if it wasn't the main mission, i'll be damned if I stand by and let innocent people take the wrap for something that was my responsibility. I quickly erupted a lightning geyser under Goblin's feet, and then blew him away with a huge blast of Thunder Vision (the big lightning blasts from my eyes), using the Power Grid to augment the blast and send Goblin as far away from this area as possible. Granted, I only blasted him about half mile into the air, but after tapping into SMS, i'd have more than enough time to get in, save the people, and get back in the fight. I dashed back and forth between all of the buildings as fast as I could. For me, it felt like several minutes (and this was when my speed was fully amped up) as I dashed into each apartment, each store, each building, and picked up every civilian within a mile radius, and dropped them off at a local Hampton inn, about 3 miles over. Not enough off a distance to be 100% out of danger, but far enough to where I could focus on Goblin without worrying about their safety; well...at least most of them. On the way back to my starting point, aka where I blasted Goblin to the heavens, I noticed something I hadn't before, a group of five static auras in the middle of the apartment complex I had checked on my first go around. I kicked myself for not noticing them before, but then again, I was running around a lot in a small distance, my thunder trial probably electrified the air so much, their bio signatures were masked in plain sight, especially considering how fast I was going. Anyway, I raced in after them. The crumbling building was almost finished coming down, but if I hightailed it, I could get them all out of there with about .1 seconds to spare: I raced up the stairs, took the third hall on the right (it was way too risky to go phasing through walls, I might've fallen through a missing floor), and smashed my way into the apartment. The first person I got to was a boy. He looked around eight years old, with messy black hair, green eyes, wearing a red T-Shirt and blue shorts. I managed to get him to the safe zone lickity split, and made my way back to rescue his mother, father, two brothers, and sister. Again, I managed to get a hold of one of his other brothers, and his sister (who ironically enough all looked similar); this time things didn't go according to plan, not even a little. I managed to get back outside, and as far as the stop light, about 50 meters away, before my speed failed me. The air around me surged bright with Goblin's unnatural lightning. It was too fast, my reflexes only barely kicked in as I raised a body shield around myself and the kids; and not a very good one. Everything flashed bright for a second, and when I was able to see again, I found myself lying on the asphalt, staring at a boy with black hair, green eyes, a nearly singed off black shirt, and frying skin almost as black as obsidian. I could feel the absence of electricity pulsing through his body, his static aura slowly dissipating; his eyes were wide open, looking dead at me, but they were glazed over, a million miles away. I nearly lost it at the sight. This boy was dead. Even worse, the apartment complex had already been trashed, his parents and other brother were in there. I didn't save them. I had completely failed them all, if only I had been faster, if only I had kept the battle back in the wheat fields near Scott City, if only….I heard something! The small cough of a little girl over to my left, near a smoking car. I ran over to her and scooped her in my arms. She was pretty banged up. A broken arm, lightly burnt skin, and there was a nasty gash across her forehead, probably had a concussion, but she was still alive; thank God, she was alive. Still, something seemed off. I wasn't in Speed Mode, it had been at least a good twenty seconds since Goblin had last attacked. I used my Thunder Sense to scan for him, and found him hovering about 200 feet in the air directly over me and the kids. I looked up, and that was when my enhanced vision kicked in (well kicked in further, my eyesight was already 20/20, but if I need it to be, I can zoom in on objects further away). Goblin had his arms crossed, a smug look on his face that was mixed with a type of sadistic glee and satisfaction. He seemed to be gloating over me at the sight of my failed attempt to save the boy and his family, as if saying: _See? Now what did I tell you? _I heard his voice in my head again, the black hole actually increasing in force against the edges of my skull.

"_Death always wins," _he said. "_And I will bring death to all."_

I got a tight hold on the girl, scooped up the boy, and made a mad dash away from where I was. While I was running, I couldn't help but feel revolted at the sick feeling of dead weight from carrying the boy in my right arm. I mean, I can lift an entire ton, and this boy was still the heaviest thing i've ever had to hold. By the way, I was making a mad dash to the hospital (which was conveniently about half a mile from the Hampton Inn). Firstly, the girl needed some medical attention, and the boy deserved to at least get ready for a decent burial (yeah I know, morgue and hospital are not the same thing). As I ran, I raised a decent body shield around me and the kids, they had suffered enough damage for one day; I also found another way to use the Power Grid to my advantage. Instead of using it as just another energy source, I used it as a kind of energy sonar; if Goblin was gonna try and pull the rug under me again with my own trick, i'd sense it immediately, and be able to counter it. As was such, it wasn't exactly needed. Goblin flew after me, trying to blast me with bolts of lightning, and fire, but I was way too determined to get these kids to safety; he could barely keep up, much less get a proper shot. It only took about half a second, but I saw the hospital within sight, which meant that I had to stall for some time. I accessed the Power Grid, trapped Goblin in another tesla sphere, and launched it as far backwards as I mentally could; that would provide me with at least 5 seconds. I quickly dashed through the emergency room, and plopped the kids on the nearest set of chairs.

"SOMEONE HELP!" I shouted. "I NEED A DOCTOR HERE FOR THE GIRL!"

A few nurses and a doctor who looked suspiciously like David Hasselhoff, ran out and surveyed the scene. Mr. Kennedy said that these mask would blur my face when in public, which is why the group looked at me like I was a ghost.

"Who are you?" the doctor asked me. "What-"

"That's not important!" I quickly interrupted him. "The girl needs help now! The boy is already dead, but please take care of him, make sure he gets sent to be properly buried. I have to go now, the guy who did this is on my-"

My Speed Sense kicked in hard. Directly behind me, Goblin was already charging through the doors, his mouth opened in mid roar, and a column of fire spewing from his mouth. The path was way too narrow, and he was coming in way too hot. If I didn't get him out of the building this very nanosecond, the doctor, nurse, and the girl would die, and who knows how many more who were behind the walls, or in various other parts of the building. I was having none of it. No more deaths. Except for Goblin, no one else was dying today. I summoned my shield and charged it with a ton of voltage. Once I was satisfied with the nearly uncontrollable surge, I rammed into Goblin's face (I created a body shield around myself to take care of the flames that my shield couldn't protect me from), and discharged a powerful, but extremely focused, blast of lightning that launched him out of the emergency lobby, and sent him crashing into a couple cars in the parking lot. I kept up the pressure, determined to get this fight away from the hospital. Using my shield (which was still charged with a considerable amount of voltage), I caught up to Goblin, and while blocking or avoiding his various axe swings, I repeatedly whacked and slashed at him with my shield. In all honesty, I should've busted it out a long time ago. It was light, good on defense, and was sharp enough to easily slice through his arms and legs; I even managed to get some good shots off on his armor that actually broke off some pieces. Goblin and I went at it like this for a good 30 seconds, but after a few close calls with his fire balls, plus the weighing inevitability that sooner or later, one of us would call down some lightning, I remembered my main objective, which was to keep this fight moving. I blocked one of Goblin's swings one last time, did a quick sweeping move with my shield, slicing off his legs at the kneecaps, and with a charging train construct (I loved making those), I launched Goblin a good half a mile away from the hospital, and raced after him. At about three times the speed of sound, I rammed Goblin with my shield in his lower back, zipped around him and uppercut him with the mother of all Thunder Fist constructs. As he was flying backwards, I used the Power Grid to hit him with Phantom Bolt after Phantom Bolt, trying to keep him off balance, and cause as much damage to him as possible. This strategy worked for a while, but Goblin managed to break the cycle with a huge explosive wave, and flew straight at me like a pissed of flying piranha; I took off running in the opposite direction (did I forget to mention that we were fighting in the middle of traffic?).

For the next five minutes or so, fighting Goblin was about the same of Fast &amp; Furious mixed with Clash of the Titans. As I was dashing in and out of traffic, I was using the Power Grid so much, i'm surprised I didn't burn out all of the electrons in the air. From giant sledgehammers, to Phantom Bolts, and missile constructs, I kept blasting Goblin with everything I had; the ironic thing was how much I was defending others from his attacks rather than myself. See, most of his blasts were, either on purpose or by terrible aim, heading towards civilian vehicles, and like I said, I wasn't letting anyone else die today. Every time I sensed one of his blasts going off course, I immediately accessed the Power Grid, and made a shield construct a good ways away from whatever it was going to hit, while at the same time, maintaining my voltage fury against Goblin. After about 20 missiles, 10 sledgehammer, and a hell of a lot of Phantom Bolts, Goblin finally lost his cool, and tried to tackle me head on. You know, if I took a shot for every time Goblin tried to charge me head on, i'd be drunk as f*(#. Still, I couldn't get so smug and arrogant, the only reason I had to fight smart was because all it would take is one good punch without any defenses or protection, and i'd be a spot on the pavement; people like Goblin on the other hand, had lives to burn. Anyway, I sidefliped over him, stuck my sword in between his exposed armor points (which were really starting to increase), and knocked us both out of traffic with a huge Phantom Bolt. A few seconds later, my Speed Sense kicked in, and I saw that Goblin and I were headed for a huge tree, that probably would've smashed me into mush at the rate I was going to hit it. I took that as my signal to get off, and I launched myself off of Goblin by hitting him in his side with my fist, and using the lightning that erupted from it, to propel me into the air, and in between the trees branches. Goblin simply smashed through it (and a few more), before crashing hard to the ground. On the bright side, that was so hilarious that it could've easily earned a million hits on YouTube. The bad side? Goblin recovered faster than I thought he would, and faced me while I was still in the air. Meaning that if he chose to shoot me with something dark, purple, and powerful, i'd be helpless to dodge it.

Naturally, Goblin started to do just that. But as his eyes started glowing, I quickly launched a construct missile barrage at him made from my own power reserves (the boys back at S.H.I.E.L.D. want me to be as thorough as possible). This mattered, because, while the Power Grid allowed me to access energy from thin air (figuratively speaking), my own power reserves both harness and concentrated electricity, making it a lot more powerful. Anyway, Goblin created a barrier over himself, and as soon as my feet touched the ground, he tried the whole tackling thing again (that's another shot). I went into Speed Mode, dodged him Neo style (Matrix reference), quickly turned around, and shot him in his side with a Phantom Bolt; P.S. more trees will die. I knocked Goblin in his side with another Phantom Bolt, and he went careening through several trees. As I ran towards him, I created two huge Thunder Fists, and started wailing on him at high speed. Whenever I swung at him, a half a million volt fist knocked him through several full grown trees. When he tried tackling me, two giants fists said Hell No, and b*+(# slapped him through three more trees, and so on, and so on. It would go on like this for a good minute and a half, Goblin actually getting better over the course of the brawl, almost managing to get a shot off on me. Still, I was faster, and more pissed off than ever. Looking at his monstrous face filled me with so much rage, so much hate, and disgust, I couldn't help but unhinge a little bit. When he retreated and tried attack with a lightning strike, I grabbed him with one of the fist constructs, recycled the energy from the other one to make a huge thunderbolt, and made it slam into Goblin with the force of a tank. As Goblin went flying backwards, I created more Thunder Fists and continued to wail on him for as long as I could. With each strike, my grief for the family I couldn't save, for my friend who almost got killed at Goblin's hand, for the agents and heroes that were probably dead because of him, all of it got let loose.

"WHAT'S THE MATTER!?" I roared at him as I kept up the pounding. "I A BIT HARDER TO KILL THAN A DEFENSELESS BOY!?"

A hard right electric fist exploded in face.

"DOES MY MY POWER RATE A BIT HIGHER THAN THAT OF A CRYING LITTLE GIRL!?"

Two fists danced around Goblin, punching every square inch of his being.

"YOU LIKE CAUSING PAIN? YOU LOVE DEATH SO MUCH? LET ME TEACH YOU PAIN! LET ME GIVE YOU DEATH!"

The fists slammed into Goblin one last time, exploding on impact, and in that moment, I realized something horrible. It wasn't just vengeance for the family that got broken because of Goblin that motivated me. Hell, it wasn't even the desire to do right for the sake of it. No, deep down, I was taking out my anger on Goblin, anger against myself. You, see I realized that it didn't matter what way you twisted it. Whether I was a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern, a hero in training, a temporary member of a temporary task force, whatever. Here and now, I was a superhero, and because of me, two little kids will never see their brother or parents again; I had become what I hate, my whole vendetta against heroes was null and void, and that left me with nothing solid to cling to. I hated that, and now Goblin was paying the price for my failures.

Moving back to the fight. Before Goblin could even think about recovery, I raised my hands, and the sky around us went from grey to almost black (different city, the sky wasn't the same like in Scott City), and after a boom of thunder so loud, a Zeus Cannon fell from the heavens, and steamrolled Goblin into the ground. The blast was so big, it would've easily swallowed two skyscrapers whole, in fact, it was a good thing I was in the middle of some abandoned park, because this blast would've completely destroyed traffic or anything else that could get wrecked. Still, I was fighting angry, I was losing my grip on my skill, and I nearly paid the price for that with my life. Goblin erupted out of the ground, and grabbed me in his right fist. Usually my Speed Sense would alert me of this kind of thing, but it required my static aura to activate, and in the presence of the Zeus Cannon, it was probably overloaded from all of the voltage. Anyway, Goblin gripped me tight with both of his hands, and I had to put all of my being into maintaining a body shield that would hold up to the pressure. As if I wasn't already f*(# % up enough, Goblin opened his mouth, and blasted me with a brutal wave of concentrated fire. The blast lasted for a good 10 seconds, pushing my shields durability, and my ability to keep it up, to the max. After the barrage stopped, and everything wasn't purple anymore, I kinda wanted everything to be purple again; it would've been 10X more of a welcome sight, than Goblin's oversized fist ramming into me.

You better believe I shot through the air like a missile from Hell. At about 200 mph, I soared through the air, my body shield destroyed after being hit with that Hulk level punch. Thanks to both the shield and my armor, I didn't have anything broken where it mattered, but I was definitely not in the best of situations to make a fighting stand; and you know what, things actually started to get worse from there. My Speed Sense went off, but this time in two different directions. I could sense Goblin's lightning blast making it's way towards me, so that was nothing new, but behind me, my Thunder Sense was picking up a giant building, and at the speed I was going at, the impact would definitely be excruciating, if not kill me. I quickly summoned my shield and curled under it, while raising another body shield to take the brunt of the impact with the building. Half a sec later, the lightning blast pushed me from going at 200 mph, to 255 mph; all that was left was to take the crash like a man. Honestly, it wasn't that bad. Thanks to the body shield, the what would be bone crushing ordeal, only felt like being rammed into a really thick layer of padding; still kinda painful, but definitely not anything health hazardous. Still, this was not the worst part of what was to come. As soon as I crashed through the building and opened my eyes, while still in mid fall (I had crashed into what had to be a college library), Goblin freaking already had a hand enclosed around me. How he flew so fast that even my Speed Sense couldn't alert me, I don't know. What I did know was that the fight had once again moved to a populated area, and I was stuck in an impossible situation unless I used my lightning powers. Yet, even in the face of certain death and destruction, something amazing happened. Whether it was sudden realization, or body reflex, I suddenly remembered my cool new ability to phase through solid objects. Now If you're thinking that I just phased through Goblin's next attack, you're wrong (although that wouldn't have been a bad idea). No, on another reflex, I charged my fist with a ton of lightning, which felt weird considering that I was already vibrating at high speed, and punched Goblin in the face with a desperate right cross. Normally, this wouldn't even be a lovetap to someone like Goblin, but this punch wasn't normal. As soon as my fist made impact, Goblin got knocked back with the force of a bomb, completely crashing through the library entrance (good thing I was wearing a vibrating mask), and at least two cars out in the parking lot (so glad I was wearing a vibrating mask); oh and by the way, he was still going, and going, and going. Usually, this would be the part where the guy stares at his hand in disbelief, and wonder to himself how he accomplished such a feat; I simply gave myself a silent whop, as well as cursing myself for not figuring this out, or at least trying it out sooner. Long story short, according to Physics (i'll keep it simple), the faster and object moves, the more kinetic energy, inertia, and mass it has; meaning it'll hurt like a b!+^#. I was vibrating my molecules at around several hundred thousand m/s (miles per second), not to mention the lightning speeding up my molecules by at least two times what they were already going at, plus the actual speed of my arm going forward. Add that up, and you get a punch with the force of about 800,100 m/s. Long story short, science rules, and so do I. I got up quickly, and made a mad dash for Goblin, only barely managing to keep a lock on him by using the Power Grid to track his energy signature. You know you really have the power to ruin somebody's day when you actually go looking for a psychopath overpowered on undead energy. Is this how all mutants come into their powers? Because if so, that's troubling to think about. Anyway, as I was running towards Goblin, I heard another voice in my head.

"_That's it boy!" _said some guy who sounded like he was having the time of his life, and at the same time, in a hurry. "_Show that upstart ruffian the true potential of a speedster!"_

"_Please shut up!" _I thought back to him, because I was certain I wasn't imagining it. "_I'm trying to focus, plus I really don't need any more strangers in my head!"_

"_Ever vigilant!" _the dude responded. "_Very well, I shall leave you to your duties. Know that Hermes, the lord of speed, is rooting for your victory; Excelsior my friend!"_

Uhhhh…...ok. A god was in my head. An actual mythological god chose to talk to me, for no other reason than to tell me that he was betting on me; i'm gonna do my best to be ok with that.

So as far as the fight was progressing, it was actually going pretty damn good. I managed to catch up to Goblin in half a sec, and while he was a bit too high for me to reach, a well timed lightning strike brought him down to ground level, and back in striking range. I made my body vibrate again, not as fast as my first time (that would be way too hard to do while running), but enough to keep putting the hurt on Goblin. While running, I hit him with several hard vibration punches (not an official name), and watched in glee as he bounced back further and further, multiple pieces of armor chipping off of him in the wind. It wasn't a strategy that didn't come with it's flaws. For one, I only struck with more force, but I was not stronger, or more durable, so it wasn't like I could get careless and start brawling like an idiot. Also, I may have been striking with a bit more power than Grant (a fact that I would have to rub in his face if he was alive), but Goblin was still stronger, on top of still having energy manipulation powers. So yeah, there were a few times where he recovered, and we had to have a battle of lightning and constructs before I managed to pull the rug out from under him again before I could go back to hitting him with some seriously amplified speed punches. After a while, or should I say after punching Goblin's ass around the town for a good two minutes, I tried something different. I punched Goblin with a few more vibration punches to the gut (tapping into SMS to make sure he didn't fly off into the distance), I ran back as fast as I could, about a good two miles or so, and came back to deliver the hardest punch i've ever dealt in my life. Seriously, the air around us boomed so much, that it shredded trees and actually put cracks in the concrete. Goblin on the other hand, practically disappeared as he rocketed off into the distance, his armor literally breaking off in chunks as he careened out of control. I followed eagerly, sensing the end in sight, but found to my horror that Goblin was heading straight towards a small neighborhood about 10 miles from where we were. I immediately, used my Thunder Sense to scan for signs of people, and breathed a little easier when I sensed only about 50 or so civilians; not completely out of danger, but if I could direct the fight the way I wanted to, I could move it away from the people easy as pie. As was such, Goblin was on a collision course with a small house that was filled with a good five people. I hit him to the side with a Phantom Bolt, ran up the length of the building parkour style, and kicked Goblin with a huge spinning vibration kick, followed by a vibration hammer punch, sending him smashing across the road like a skipping stone (aww what the hell, Vibration Punch/Kick it is, can't think of anything else). Not to downplay the awesomeness of what I just did (because it was pretty awesome), but Goblin immediately retconned everything I had done up to this moment in the very next second. He got up and hovered a few feet off of the ground, engulfing himself in Underworld energy. It didn't take long, just a small flash, a slight flare, but when it all died down, Goblin was sporting a fresh set of armor, completely repaired, no cracks, missing chunks or anything; I was pissed. Still, Goblin, didn't stop there, no no no, he was just getting started. He roared again, so loud that he actually shattered all of the glass within a half mile radius, and after glowing brighter than one of Allyson's mini-sun's, blasted me with the mother of all power cannons, as in, this mother was so big, it would've blown a trench of carnage through the neighborhood, and everything behind it, if I didn't stop it. I immediately flashed back to my first day of training, when Ms. Marvel nearly blasted me to to the great unknown with a huge Photon Blast; naturally I responded to this situation in the same way. I dug into as much electricity as I could, which wasn't even all of it, considering the fact that my body is a living generator, and blasted Goblin with at least several hundred million volts of juice. The power struggle was so real, like trying to push back thousands of tons of force with both my mind and body. On top of that, this battle wasn't exactly exclusive. Small tendrils of lightning from both our blasts, which were big enough to shatter statues, bounced outwards in random dangerous tangents. One of mine's hit a few trees, blowing them to splinters, Goblin's tore through the roads like dry clay, and once, one of my bolts almost crashed into an empty house, forcing me to derail it with half a second to spare. After those subtle hints, I kinda got the memo that Goblin and I needed a controlled environment for our battle, so I accessed the Power Grid, and used it to create a barrier around the two of us and our power battle. This was a good idea if you were focused solely on protecting people (which I was), but not if you were trying to win any battles. You see, accessing the Power Grid allows me and alternate source of power to draw on, which helps if you're doing a lot of speed combat. However, it still took a lot of concentration to access, especially if you're maintaining something as large as a 100 X 50 meter containment field; in other words, the longer I held up the field, the closer and closer Goblin's blast inched towards overtaking me. I held Goblin's blast back for as long as I could, but sooner than i'd like to have said, my vision was starting to get predominately purple; not a good sign. I had nothing left to lose. If I lost this battle, i'd not only lose my life, but also the lives of everyone that I stood in the way of; I steeled my nerves, and tried something reckless. I focused on the sky above me, making it surge and rumble as it generated thousands of volts for me. I managed to keep Goblin at bay for another 10 seconds, which was like trying to keep a charging Rhino from breaking into your house, and once I could feel the power in the sky reach the exact amount of energy I needed, I quickly pulled the energy of the barrier into myself, giving my blast a bit of a boost, and in less than a second, a Zeus Cannon crashed into me, giving me all of it's power. With that major boost, I put everything I had into forcing it all on Goblin, and in less than three seconds, the blast was already an inch away from overtaking him. Still, I needed to be smart about this. I yanked my fists at a downward angle, and the very millisecond that the blast made contact with Goblin, it moved upwards and propelled itself, and Goblin sky high. With the half a second I gave myself to rest, I realized how off I felt. It wasn't like a bad thing, where it seemed like my powers were shutting down, but something felt broken inside me, something important had just snapped. Still, I didn't have time for a physical, I had a Goblin to smash. I ran after him, keeping a pin on him with my energy tracker, and got ready for the mother of all running strikes. I kept my body vibrating as I ran, building up so much kinetic energy, I probably could've leveled a small city. Once I caught up to Goblin, I hit him with a Phantom Bolt from above, knocking him within jumping range, and leapt so high into the air, it was almost like I was flying. As I reeled my fist back for what was sure to be and epic punch, Goblin somehow recovered, dodged my punch, and summoned his sword. As he swung, I panicked and vibrated even faster, which was unnecessary considering that I was already vibrating fast enough to phase through his strike. As the blade passed through me, I quickly spun around, hit Goblin with a bolt of lightning so powerful, it even surprised me as Goblin got taser zapped through the sky at about 200mph; seriously, that was just a reflex shot, it shouldn't have been near that powerful or focused. Still, I didn't get the proper shot off on Goblin like I wanted to, when I landed back on the ground i'd have to try again. Then, in a sudden flash, I realized something SUPER important. I. Was. Not. Falling.

I looked at myself, would've leapt out of my skin, but it wasn't there anymore. Where my black battle suit should've been, not to mention my arms, legs, hands, feet, etc., all that was there, was a swirling outline of my body made from storm clouds. Seriously, my body was a swirling black and grey silhouette with lightning randomly sparking across it. I was somehow feeling the sensation of being lighter than air, and yet I could still feel my my body weight; it was extremely trippy, and I was freaking out. What if this was my new form now, i've heard of mutants who can't control the way they look, and while people like Nightcrawler weren't too bad, I couldn't be a floating cloud for the rest of my life, I was way too pretty for that! Just as I was starting to fear i'd be a storm cloud forever (when I really should've been focused on fighting Goblin), time slowed down to a literal freeze, and another voice drummed into my head.

"_Calm yourself Jason!" _A voice like thunder itself boomed in my head. "_All will be well, if thou'st will heed my commands!"_

"_WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?" _I mentally shouted back at him "_AND IF YOU DID THIS TO ME, YOU BETTER-"_

"_DO NOT PRESUME TO COMMAND ME BOY!" _the voice exploded in my head, making me a bit more silent than I usually would have been to anyone else. "_I AM ALL-FATHER ZEUS! LORD OF THE SKIES, KING OF THUNDER! WIELDER OF STORMS! AND I DEMAND RESPECT FROM MY DESCENDANTS!"_

Yeah, even with the almost certainty that my head wouldn't stop ringing for a good few days, I was pretty sure I had heard the voice of Zeus say the word 'descendants', and use the word as a reference to me. No freaking way.

"_Descendant?" _I cautiously thought back to him. "_As in, you're my times however many great grandfather?"_

"_Indeed," _he thought back to me. "_You are a fiftieth generation child of the All-Father, and thou art just coming into the fruition of his greater powers."_

"_Not to sound ungrateful 50X great grandpa, but you do understand that your stuff is running amok in the world right? Goblin has one that belongs to 50X great uncle, any chance I could get some godly backup here?_

"_If it were that simple child, I would've sent warriors from Olympus to retrieve them already. No, Olympus is under siege. The same dark forces that have undone our magic to keep the stones hidden, have also assembled an assault on Olympus. We cannot reach out to our allies, nor can they to us; for now, the world will have to get by without the aid of the gods."_

"_Yeah, cuz we reeeally needed your help the last 3,000 years."_

"_If only you knew boy. As such, the gods are preoccupied, and can not be of assistance, however, I sensed a sizeable surge of my power manifest itself on earth; I had to be sure that it was not one of my enemies trying to use my own power against me."_

"_So you have no idea why i'm like this?"_

"_Of course I do! As a result of both being my descendant, as well as a genetic mutation, my powers have blended with your mutant ability to increase the speed of your body and cellular structure; you are literally the result of a cross between mutant and divinity, you should be honored."_

"_I can barely contain my joy! But why now, and will I be able to reverse it!?"_

"_You are starting to annoy me child! Your current form is a result of you constantly overcharging your cells with lightning, your body is literally breaking through it's barriers that you helped to destroy! This is not something that will be permanent, nor will it simply vanish. Your new powers must run their courses, and properly integrate into your system. Though I am occupied in battle, my window of communication will remain open for twenty more minutes; assuming you will mind your tongue and heed my instructions, I will guide you through your new powers. Are you ready Jason?"_

"_Yeah whatever, let's just do this already."_

My mind suddenly felt like it was being churned around in a blender, kinda like what the Norn-Fates did, but less mind numbing. After it was over, I suddenly knew how to use my new cloud powers. It was like Zeus had simply poured an instruction manual in my head, I wasn't scared anymore; far from it.

"_Show him the wrath of the sky!" _Zeus screamed into my head, as I time resumed, and I shot at Goblin like a missile.

I couldn't say that I flew faster than I ever have, because this was my first time, BUT BOY WAS IT SOMETHING! I wasn't going as fast as I could on the ground (probably cuz I needed more practice), but there was something about flying, the absence of limits, the rush of the wind, the feeling like I was on the world's greatest roller coaster that was only for me to ride, it was almost too much to take in at one time, so I focused on kicking Goblin's sorry butt out of my sky. As I approached him at Mach 5, I willed my Storm Form (official name), to change into the shape of a missile. After I exploded all over Goblin (poor choice of words), I split into four different fists, each big enough to pick up cars, and wailed on Goblin with a non stop Storm Fist barrage. Ok, Lesson 1 of Storm Form (yes, i'm gonna give you the SIMPLE rundown), my body, although now vapor in structure, is still mostly held together by a thin molecular bond that keeps me from spreading out into thin air. If I choose to do so, I can temporarily break or alter those bonds, giving me the ability to reshape, or alter my body in any way I want; essentially making myself a human construct. So yeah, after wailing on Goblin for a good while as Storm Fists, I regathered myself, and before Goblin could even spit in my direction, I blasted him with an extremely focused bolt of lightning, sending careening towards the ground. Lesson 2 of Storm Form, while in this form, my electric reserves were being constantly charged and vibrated, like an amped up version of Monster being blended with Red Bull. As a result, all of my lightning blasts were 5X as strong as they would be if I wasn't incorporeal. I couldn't create lightning constructs, but that was only a minor sacrifice, especially considering what I could also do in Storm Form. I took off after Goblin, turning into a pillar of storm cloud (kinda looked like I was Apparating), and absorbing as much air pressure as I could. Goblin crashed into a small grassy area between ongoing traffic, and as soon as he got up, I reformed my body, put as much energy into my fist as I could, making it expand 10X it's size, and uppercutted Goblin so hard, I may have accidentally blew a few cars off the road (I said I was sorry). Final lesson of Storm Form 101, my new power could absorb air into itself, and use that condensed air to make my attacks hit a lot harder; think of it as a Mike Tyson fist that could turn up the hurt dials at will.

I chased Goblin around the skies for a while, punching and zapping him with as much speed and ferocity I could dish out. He tried to fight back a few times, actually zapping me in the chest with a bolt of purple lightning, and setting every nerve I had on fire. That brings me to a few weaknesses my Storm Form had. Number 1: Outside energy strains the already fragile molecular bonds that hold me together; if I get zapped with too much hostile energy, my Storm Form will either short out, or i'll just disperse into a nonliving puff of air. Number 2: No Speed Sense. That's like three problems in one; when I can't get occasional warnings about surprise attacks, I tend to take a lot more hits than I usually do. Still, even without it I was still quick on my...air, and kept up a good fight against Goblin; after that first hit, I learned to make my Storm Form maneuver a bit better, I mean I was a cloud version (better) of Mr. Fantastic after all. I kept up the fight for a good four minutes our so, but after that, things started to hurt. My molecules felt like they were being stretched apart like taffy, and if I didn't reform myself, as in get a solid body again, i'd be in some serious trouble. Right, now Goblin and I were not in the best position for a pit stop. We were over a mildly inhabited neighborhood, a group of about twenty kids playing in the streets (this place must have had like zero Wi-fi, gangs, or drug dealers), but this would have to do, I felt like Icarus' wings in the sun. I turned into a pillar of cloud again, and tackled Goblin out of the sky. As we fell, I focused on becoming solid again, willing my molecules to compact, shut off the air, and make myself tall, black, and handsome again. As we hit the ground, I quickly dashed off of Goblin, and made my way to the kids.

"Run now!" I yelled at them, probably looking really sinister with my vibrating face. "There's a bad guy over there, he wants to get you, run!"

Gotta love the simplicity of childlike comprehension, cuz they took off running and screaming like it was another game. I almost felt proud of myself, but then I heard a roar, followed by the jerking feeling of my Speed Sense. I turned around, and faced Goblin, who was nothing more or less than a charging streak of purple energy; however, things felt weird now. I was definitely in Speed Mode, I knew that much for certain, but I felt…more. I literally could feel the air, like I was in an invisible shroud of heavy fog. I didn't know how to explain it, but I felt, connected to the air, like it was listening patiently for me to give it in order. Furthermore, I felt a small bit of power building up in the pit of my stomach. It was small, microscopic even, but it was definitely growing at an alarming rate; I was actually afraid of it. Still, that was beside the point. Right here and now, the air was waiting on me to make a move, so I moved both of my arms to the right, slashed them through the air as hard as I could and grinned like an idiot as a burst of air, strong enough to rip through an oak tree, slammed into Goblin's side, sending him tumbling sideways into the pavement. This time, Zeus' voice wasn't whispering instructions in my ear. Maybe he thought I could handle it, maybe he knew I was a huge Last Airbender fan, and would imitate everything I saw on the show; either way, he was right. I raced after Goblin, swiping my fists through the air, which may have well been like hitting him with invisible shot puts. The impacts of my air blasts, while not very effective on their own, eventually got better with a bit of tweaking. After Goblin had managed to get used to small blasts of pressurized air, forcing me to backtrack and rely on lightning blasts, constructs, and vibration punches (which weren't exactly the worst things to rely on), I dodged one of his axe swings, chopped of the hand that held it, quickly spun into a vibration reverse kick (adding the lightning for good measure), and after he crashed deep into a patch of trees, which would buy me a few seconds, I went to work. I clenched my right fist, and focused on making the air around it intensify, using the electrons in the air come to life to help it along. It took a half sec, but after a while, a mini thundercloud, about twice the size of my hand, surged to life; not a moment too soon, cuz Goblin was back on his feet and darting out of the woods. I didn't know whether or not the blast was strong enough to do any real damage, but I was out of time. I reeled my arm back, took a pitching stance, and hurled my thundercloud at Goblin for all the marbles. I said something about the blast not being strong enough to do any real damage right? I feel like I should apologize to the blast, because it proved me wrong like so hard. As soon as the blast made contact with Goblin's chest, the thing blew apart with the force of an RPG on steroids, making one hell of a thunderclap, and sending Goblin through the patch of trees, and into some type of abandoned car junkyard (why was a neighborhood near a car junkyard?). I won't lie and say he didn't cause a few minor explosions, sending cars into the distance, but I will say I used the Power Grid to create a force field around our battle to keep the people safe. The good news, nobody could get in. The good/bad news, Goblin and I were not getting out (unless he gave me a really good blow to the head). I started to vibrate, and charged Goblin for all I was worth.

Goblin and I brawled in the junkyard for a good five minutes (you gotta wonder where we got the energy from), exchanging blasts and blows without pause. I used everything I had in my arsenal. Vibration punches, lightning blasts, phantom bolts, constructs, but my best trick was my new airbending (yes i'm calling it that, deal with it). I found a way to refine my airbending, to where I could slash Goblin with electrically charged blades of air. They were so sharp, they could cut right through his flesh (and the cars). Hell, there were a few times when I got a good slash off, and actually tore through pieces of Goblin armor (which immediately repaired itself), but it was definitely not a perfect formula. I was in a closed environment, which meant that I had less room to run, or dodge (without vibrating though objects), meaning more often than not, I had to rely on close quarters combat. Now with my vibration punches, that wasn't much of a threat, but remember that power building up in my stomach? The more I vibrated, the more the power grew, the more it started to hurt, the less I could maintain vibration without sheer agony. I mean think about how screwed you are, when the one thing you have that keeps you from getting killed, gets nerfed. Still, I managed to keep Goblin at bay with my airbending and lightning blasts. One time, in a move I call Tornado Blast, I managed to focus the air and electrons into a Final Flash type move, just with storming winds surging with electricity. Goblin countered it with his own power blast, actually trumping mine, and sending me though the dashboard of an old Cadillac (pissing me off in the process), but it was still a good try. After that last shot that should've broke bones, I started to get serious. My body was starting to feel unstable, volatile even, and before I could do anything about it, the winds around Goblin and I started to pick up. I didn't know how I was doing it, but Zeus started whispering instructions in my ear again, and I knew what was happening. I focused on harnessing the winds, which were now reaching speeds of near 150 mph, and extended my hands outwards. Immediately, the winds increased in speed and ferocity, engulfing anything under the force field in a swirling black death cloud, surging with voltage (I actually had to put a force field over myself to avoid getting a stray car to the head).

"_WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?" _Goblin roared at me, though I doubt he could see me through the thick haze of the rising winds. "_WHAT IS THIS MA-"_

I got tired of hearing his voice, so I hit him with a tangent of lightning from my whirlwind. After that, I did something so awesome, so mind bendingly cool, Zeus had to have been proud of me (not that I cared). While maintaining the whirlwinds, and my own personal force field, I made my way out of the giant containment field, that was keeping the winds from tearing through the neighborhood, and once I was out, I willed the winds to pick up, and take the form of a huge tornado. I'm not joking you guys, I literally created my own tornado! It wasn't anything F5 level, more of an amped up F3 with lightning galore, but it was definitely a sight to see. The tornado was about 30 stories tall, enough to rip through a small skyscraper. As it went up in height, I restructured my containment field to get smaller and taller, enough to hug the tornado just right, without cutting off it's air supply. I used the electricity in the tornado to bombard Goblin with blasts after blasts of lightning, even managing to make the winds pick up even more, to make the cars fly into him. I kept up the effort for a good minute or so, before things started to go….a different direction. Remember that power building up in me? Well, it didn't reach critical mass, but it did spike, as in the power hiccuped, and I felt the effects of that. My body started to vibrate and surge uncontrollably, making it impossible to maintain the tornado/tornado barrier. I dropped to my knees, feeling like my insides were being blended together, trying so hard to keep my vision from swimming. I couldn't see for anything, but I could sense Goblin, and more importantly, my Speed Sense was alerting me to the fact that he was coming in hot. It wasn't a perfect, reliable, or even probable shot, but I considered at the level I was vibrating, my punch would at least be enough to get him off my back for a little bit. So with everything I had, I pinpointed Goblin with my Thunder Sense, timed my shot just right, and decked him in his face, sending him on a nice flight anywhere away from here.

"_ZEUS!" _I mentally screamed at him. "_WHAT'S GOING ON?! WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME, ARE YOU DOING THIS!?"_

"_CALM YOURSELF BOY!" _he screamed back to me. "_YOUR POWER IS RISING! STOP RESTRAINING YOURSELF FROM REALIZING YOUR FULL POTENTIAL! ALLOW THE POWER TO RESONATE AND FLOW THROUGH YOU, LET IT TRANSFORM YOU COMPLETELY! DO NOT FEAR WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY YOURS!"_

Had to give it to X50 great grandpa, he could give one hell of a pep talk; made me wonder if Olympus had any sports teams.

I steadied my breathing, and let myself go. I stopped trying to stop what was happening to me, and let my powers do whatever it was they were trying to do. The churning in my stomach intensified, bolts of lightning were firing off of me in uncontrollable tangents (making me pray that they didn't hit anyone), and just when my pain levels were starting to reach a perfect 10/10, a huge blast wave exploded around me, leaving me with the feeling of a blissful existence; like burning lead had been removed from my veins. The power in my stomach was still building, but it was still rising at a steady rate, and by steady I mean, the pot hadn't completely boiled to an exploding point yet. Still, I felt great, my vision was a little blue, but other than Goblin coming to get me, in the distance, I was cool. Speaking of which, get ready for something cool. As Goblin came in for a landing, I got to my feet, and felt that familiar sense of gravity being more of an option, rather than an inescapable law of physics. As he came in hot, he blasted me with a good handful of lightning bolts, plus a huge ball of fire for good measure; I must have been getting good at the whole flying thing, because I maneuvered through his bolts, did a flying somersault over his fire ball, and upon recovery, raised my left hand and HOLY F*(#!%&amp; $#!+ WHAT A BLAST! For those of you that are confused, I was under the assumption that I would release an average bolt of lightning out of my hand. Instead, with only one hand (which isn't really a factor anyway), I released a blast twice the power of a Final Flash, without trying mind you, and made Goblin blast into what was sure to be the upper stratosphere. I was buzzing, how the hell did I do that; then I took a look at myself. I was engulfed in a massive surge of lightning, and not just like massive, meaning I was lost in a giant spark, I mean my body was surging with a thick layer of voltage that covered my whole body, essentially making me an electric version of the Human Torch. I wasn't freaking out as much as I was when I got my Storm Form, but Zeus pitched in his two cents about my new ability anyway. Thunder Form (official name) lesson 1: This ability was automatically jettisoning 1% of my powers, covering me in a aura that allowed me to fly at superhuman speeds. Also, while in this form, my powers were regenerating at half the rate they would be if I was normal, but because I was also absorbing electrons in the air, it kinda made up for that. I swallowed my hype, homed in on Goblin's signature, and took off faster than a jet.

Goblin had already recovered, and was currently blasting me with undead fire balls (all of which I easily avoided), a once I was close enough, put on another huge burst of speed, faster than he could even dream about reacting, and buried my right fist deep in his gut, followed by a mid air backflip kick, and another one handed Final Flash. Thunder Form lesson 2: In this form, my body was being vibrated constantly by the voltage. I could vibrate even further, making my attacks much more painful for my enemies, but that would be stupid to do at such an early time of development; the last thing I needed was to accidentally give myself more powers. Also, in this form, i'm five times as strong and durable, which is not overpowered (yet), considering the fact that i'd only be able to lift about 5 tons, and still couldn't take blows as many blows from Goblin like Grant or Allyson could. Anyway, as Goblin flew back another mile or so, I pursued with the utmost haste. I managed to get two good flying punches on him (both of which cracked his armor), but things balanced out between our fighting after that. Again, he managed to recover, started blasting fire and lightning at me (like a one trick pony), but this time, as I was near the point of decking him in the face, I felt the Power Grid surge with foreign energy, and just barely managed to create a shield construct over myself (wasn't sure I could still do that) as a Phantom Bolt barreled into me. I quickly recovered (which was weird in mid air), and felt another huge surge of power coming my way. I could feel the huge shape making it's way toward me, and again, just managed to create a Mega Thunder Sword (yes, i'm copying Allyson), and blocked the purple cleaver that was bigger than a giant flag pole. Goblin and I exchanged in what was an interesting sky battle to say the least. We exchanged a few sword strikes, before I got bored, hit him in the back with a Phantom Bolt, and assaulted him with the mother of all missile construct barrages. He took a good ten or so of em' pretty hard, but he quickly generated a body shield, and launched a barrage of giant scythe constructs at me. I bobbed and weaved through them, made a beeline for Goblin, and hit him with a furious punch and kick combo, occasionally creating a few Thunder Swords, to mix it up. The tactic of direct fighting was about a 5/10 on the effective scale. Don't get me wrong, I could fight, but fighting in mid air was a whole new ball game for me, and Goblin definitely got a few good shots on me as a result of my inexperience. For example, after I hit him a good few hundred times, he ignited a minor explosive wave, enough to throw me off my game, and then proceeded to get his own combo off on me. It wasn't as consistent as mine was, but then again, every time he hit me, I went soaring backwards at least a mile and a half, which felt just as painful as getting an anvil shot out of a cannon at your chest, and for a while, all I could do was up the power on my Thunder Form (which can also be used as a makeshift shield), to keep Goblin's fists from taking permanent residence in my chest. It took a good few seconds, but after getting punched and kicked around like an electric hackey sack, I finally managed to tap into Speed Mode (it's somehow different in flight), summon my shield (which absorbed so much electricity from my Thunder Form, it could charge a billion iPhones), block Goblin's punch, reflecting most of the impact back at him (and letting him have all of the juice in my shield for good measure), and upon catching up with him, pounded him relentlessly with my shield. Rather on accident, or subconscious malice, I sliced my shield across his throat, beheading him instantly. I don't know why I did it, I didn't expect it to work, but I created a small orb of electricity, threw it in Goblin's hole where his head used to be, and made it detonate inside of him. I didn't expect much out of that, just a way to f*(# with Goblin for a bit, but as it turns out, I just struck gold. Goblin's body started to convulse and spasm (I had to back up quick to avoid a spasmodic backhand). In the center of his chest, energy, both electric and undead, overloaded and fried what was his nervous system or whatever. His arms and legs were being electrocuted off, but at the same time, being held together by the stone. Also, in what was probably an emergency repair, his head immediately reformed over his body; he was still a convulsing spasmodic mess, barely capable of combat, but he was at least in one piece. Still, that's just a minor detail, the main thing to realize was that I had just found a way to put Goblin out of action for good, but it would take a bit of maneuvering and a hella stalling.

I eyed Goblin down for a few seconds as he started to calm down from his episode. He glared back at me, and I could actually see that hate emanating from his eyes; forget The Shining One, I had Goblin's full attention. He charged me, and after knocking him sideways with a Phantom Bolt, I started brawling. Ok, backtracking a bit, I didn't IMMEDIATELY start brawling. While Goblin was flying halfway to the next city, I quickly summoned my blade, created a sheath construct on my back, and stored the blade there. The plan was to beat up on Goblin for as long as it took to get the blade charged with enough energy, and once at near critical, i'd land Goblin somewhere unpopulated, slice his head off, put the blade in his chest, and let the puppy blow; hey, external damage wasn't doing the trick, might as well try and take him from the inside. I rushed after Goblin, and kept up the pressure. To be fair, he put up more than a decent fight, what with his superior strength, average level of energy manipulation, and occasional constructs, but I was getting the hang of my Thunder Form quicker than he could even hope to put me down. I bobbed and weaved through his blasts, countered his constructs, and made up for my lack of strength (or should I say lack of OP strength) with speed, tenacity, and skill. We duked it out for a good five minutes, in which we both got off a good few shots on each other (we literally Rocky III punched each other, and i'm sure he damn near broke my jaw), had a war of constructs, and used more voltage in this fight alone than a million electric companies. Still, Goblin was kinda f*(#d up. No matter which way you spin it, lightning comes from the sky, and given my new air and cloud powers, I was more at home than Grant, Allyson, or Goblin could ever be; I used that gravy train for all it was worth. I got another punch and kick combo started, managing to mix it up with a few Final Flashes, and some constructs to try and keep Goblin off-balance; that worked about 7/10 times, but I definitely got backhanded, drop kicked, and even railed by a train construct (copycat), a good few times. As I fought Goblin through the air, two things kept constantly running through my mind. Number one: My sword was getting close to the charge it needed to be at, but there were simply too many towns and highways in the mix, I had to work on moving the fight further and further, until I could find some open space; I mean seriously it's freaking Kansas, this place was mostly wheat farms (is that racist? I apologize if that's racist) Number two: Remember that boiling pot of power building inside me, yeah THAT puppy was getting close to exploding, so much that it hurt like a bomb going off in every inch of my nervous system; whatever this thing was, it was gonna be one hell of a spectacle when it debuted.

So yeah, after a few more minutes of fighting relentlessly (seriously I was going full throttle and wasn't even slightly winded, what's up with that?), I found a golden opportunity, as in so good and so obvious, it was almost like a f*(# you to both me and Goblin. Wherever I was, I took a quick glance down, and saw what had to have been dozens upon dozens of crop circles. Seriously, each of em' were big enough to plant at least 200 fast food joints on them, with individual parking lots and everything. Some were green, others were barren (it was winter after all), but they were all empty and unpopulated; completely safe. My mind went back to the people who died during my fight with Goblin, how they could have been avoided if the battle had been here all along, but I pushed that thought down as far as I could; right now I had a job to finish. I trapped Goblin in a tesla sphere, took out my sword, and threw it at one of the crop circles, willing the voltage to remain constant, doesn't matter where it ended up (and it's not like I could accurately point it out, unless Google Earth was involved), I could summon it back on a dime. The only trick part, was getting Goblin to the ground. No, I don't mean just a few lightning bolts, missile constructs, and Zeus Cannons (although that would've been effective as well); no, I needed to drop Goblin in a big way, so that when the dust cleared, he'd never see my endgame coming. I overloaded the tesla sphere and sent Goblin flying backwards. With the two seconds that gave me, I switched from Thunder to Storm form (which was like going from hot to cold in a millisecond), and let Goblin come to me again. He tired blasting me with more lightning, but I dissipated around it, and reformed as a giant fist, knocking him back hard. Now this is where things get a bit trippy, even for me. As I was pummeling Goblin with my morning star fists, I heard…voices. This wasn't Zeus' voice (hence voices, plural), but they were kinda familiar, like the voice of that guy you know in the background. Furthermore, they weren't really voices rather than, a kind of unique Morse code (for lack of better term), and they all kept saying the same thing: '_use us!' 'become us!' 'ignite us!' _

I didn't know who the hell they were, or what the hell they were talking about, but if my life is any indicator, all you have to do is ask the mysterious, strange voices that resonate in your head, and they will answer.

"_Who are you?" _I thought to them. "_And how do I use, become, and ignite you? Furthermore, are y'all good guys, cuz i'm not too keen to take any chances with shady folk."_

"_We are water in air, we are keepers of lightning, we are the very clouds that you have used to call down your mighty thunder! And now, we offer you our fealty and servitude, all you need do is accept our gift!"_

"_Why should I? What can clouds do for me?"_

"_Join us, and find out."_

It wasn't exactly a perfect sales pitch (a solid 6/10 to be exact), but as I was fighting Goblin (or should I say beating on; the guy couldn't hit or blast me for $#!+), I noticed something tugging me, lightly coxing me to join it. I knew it was the clouds being evermore persistent, but I didn't know how good the deal really was. It felt like a warm bed was calling out to me, telling me to take a load off and sleep; and at the same time, it was like an extreme jolt of energy was trying to find it's way into my system, encouraging me to kick some more ass. Either way, it felt amazing, and I knew I had to give it a go; hopefully I get the edge I needed to ground Goblin for good. I uppercutted Goblin higher into the sky, which was so dark and black with thunder clouds, I just knew it was my doing. Once Goblin and I were surrounded by the swirling black mother of all F5s waiting to happen, I opened myself to the clouds, and let them absorb me. Honestly, it felt like I was joined up with my squad (i've never had a squad), like I had the power of an empire backing me up. I could feel every inch of the clouds (which were stretching out for miles), which felt so natural, it was almost like an extension of myself. I could've stayed in the sky forever, bonding with the clouds, and remaining in a state of eternal peace/adrenaline high, but Goblin was not ready to wait that long. He started roaring and spouting curses at me as he blasted fire and lightning in every direction. I was literally part of the clouds, so none of his blasts actually hurt me, but I got irritated at him for being such an ass, and when I get irritated, lightning starts to flicker; being in the clouds was no different. Lightning started to flash over a seven mile radius, and thunder boomed like an army of drummers; believe me when I tell you, there is nothing more surreal than being apart of a thunderstorm you created simply by getting annoyed. If that was what I could do while annoyed, then it was gonna be so much fun when I showed Goblin what I could do when I got mad. I focused on his energy signature, and amped up the lightning. I commanded the clouds (basically me) to swirl around Goblin with the rage of a thousand storm gods. Again, he tried blasting at the air like a jackass, so I blasted back. In the blink of an eye Goblin was pelted from all sides with Mega Lightning Strikes that were so fast, the thunder took three seconds to get with the program. I kept up the lightning, and at the same time, put a bigger up on the hurt factor. I willed sections of cloud to take the form of various constructs (fists, missiles, swords, arrows, fighter jets etc.), charged them with lightning, and sent them flying into Goblin. Honestly if it wasn't for my Thunder Sense, I wouldn't have been able to see Goblin in the explosion (well, I wouldn't be able to see anything in general, being one with the clouds puts a damper on seeing with your eyes by 100%). He kept bouncing in and out of various puffs of clouds, and occasionally got blasted a bit too low for my liking, forcing me to throw him back up with a Storm Fist; lucky for me, I could bounce my consciousness everywhere in the clouds (seriously, if the world was 90% covered in clouds all the time, I could be from NYC to Rome in a split second). But yeah, you get the picture, I toasted Goblin in the air, and while that was fun, I had to get back to business, and ground him hard.

After keeping him in a pinball game for another few seconds, I got a really cool idea to make that happen. I trapped him in a tesla sphere, and in the few seconds that followed, a moved my consciousness right above him, pulling in all of the clouds to one focal point. Then in the most amazing display of storm power ever (as in Thor and Storm don't got $#!+ on me), I decked Goblin straight into the ground in the form of a massive Storm Fist, big enough to tear through the Empire State Building like a house of cards. In the aftermath of the impact, which pretty much leveled the crop circle we landed in, and probably damaged the surrounding ones (sorry about that Kansas), I reformed my physical self about 50 meters away from Goblin. He was still in a huge crater, and was still recovering from the force of a million wrecking balls being dropping on his head, so he took a few more seconds than usual to rise up from the ground (irony); that left me with plenty of time to ponder myself. Seriously, at this point it was like I had a new medical problem for every power I got, and this one was no exception. It was like I had accidentally ingested a battleship. My body wasn't exactly hurting in a physical sense, but I felt something in me, almost like an alternate energy reserve that I had completely maxed out. Don't worry my body wasn't gonna explode, but it did feel pushed to maximum capacity; besides, I had bigger problems rising out of the dirt. Goblin hovered over the surface of the crater, clutching his chest, his armor broken in multiple places, but repairing fast. This was my best chance, the opportunity wouldn't get any more golden than right now. I tapped into SMS, and charged. Right before I reached the crater (which was about the width of an average pool, and probably twice as deep), I summoned my shield, threw it perfectly (I tweaked the trajectory a little bit), and decapitated Goblin clean. I leapt over him, and in mid flip, grabbed his head, pulled it off, summoned my billion volt sword, threw it into his chest, and slammed his head back on his neck as I landed safely on the other side, and came down from SMS. Just like I thought, his healing factor kicked in regardless of the X1,000,000,000 lightning bolt in his chest. He started on scream, and claw at his armor, which was so durable, even he couldn't scratch through it. I honestly could've watched Goblin suffer like this for a good while (i'm a little sadistic, not a lot, but a little), but I really had to put a stop to this and check on my teammates. I clenched my right fist, imagining every volt of lightning erupting in his chest like the world's deadliest nuke, and the light show began. The explosion was so...I mean it was just…. just try and think of a word that means massive X50, and you'll get the gist of how atomic (that could've worked) the boomage was. Immediately, my vision was lost in a giant flash of blue. If Goblin was roaring, it had no chance in hell of being heard over the sound of the world's biggest thunderclap. The blastwave was so powerful and massive, that I actually had to absorb a good chunk of energy, just to be sure that it wouldn't spill out into any populated areas, although I will not deny, I would not be surprised if Delta Force was banned from Kansas; seriously, we wrecked (me mostly) at least 20 agriculture fields, the people of this good state will hate us when the story of this battle gets out from second hand sources. Speaking of which, absorbing all of that energy wasn't the smartest thing to do. Sure it was mostly my energy, but it had been tainted by Goblin's energy; kinda like room temperature water, compared to a cold one. Still, I would've absorbed all the tainted voltage in the world if it meant not seeing what I did a few seconds later.

In the aftermath of the blastwave, instead of a charred (if even that), remains of Goblin, with maybe a few pieces of his armor scattered across the dirt, Goblin was still…..kinda standing. Don't get me wrong, he was pretty f*(&amp;# up. most of his arms and legs were missing, his armor was in shambles, with barely enough to actually cover his chest, but that wasn't the most surprising part. Before I could charge him, Goblin, who was surging on and off with blue and purple electricity, started to grow. No, I don't mean like grow as in body grow, I mean he was encased in a giant purple field, which steadily grew and grew, until it was a 60ft battle avatar in the shape of what Goblin would be, if he wasn't playing the part of life support victim. Goblin was definitely out of it. Sure, I only had so much time with Combat Avatars myself, but his was like a sluggish, slow, disoriented, drunken bull trying to find the guy with the red shirt; hell, my guess was either this was somehow my fault, or the stone giving him another defense mechanism. Either way, I was screwed, Goblin locked on to me after a quick second, and I ran for my life, as he tried to trample me. Before you talk $#!+, no I did not forget that I had the power to become a mega thunder titan, I just didn't have the time to set up a Combat Avatar, what with Goblin shooting Mega Lightning Bolts out of his hands (seriously, even I couldn't do that yet). I ran as fast as I could, dodging the lightning bolts, and once I could manage it, made a sharp U turn, and ran backwards a good mile or so, before turning around again for a rebound.

"_Your inability to finish your opponents will be your undoing boy," _Zeus said in my head. "_Why do you strengthen the forces that try to destroy you?"_

"_That was an accident!" I snapped at him. "I was trying to blow him up from the inside, how was I supposed to know he'd get all giant!?"_

"_Lightning enhances power boy! Do not presume to believe that you can destroy the stone with the divine element that gives power!"_

"_I GOT IT! JUST GIVE ME A SEC WILL YA, LET ME FIX THIS!"_

"_AND WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU PLAN TO DO!?"_

"_JUST WATCH ME!"_

I poured on the speed, using my lightning trail as energy to help me on my way. Goblin couldn't see me yet, on the ground I was way too fast for him to keep up with, so by the time I had made my move, Goblin couldn't do anything but get trucked by a giant electric man, with an eagle head. Don't ask. Just don't ask. At this rate, just accept that my Combat Avatars are random in shape, based off of things i've either seen or read, and that at one point or another, I might spit out a John Cena shaped one.

I pounded Goblin as hard as I could, my eagle man obeying my every movements with extreme precision. I wanted to say that my control over my Combat Avatar was more than sufficient to hold Goblin down, but his bull like fighting style got me off of him real quick. We both regained our footing relatively fast, and resumed beating the ever living hell out of our respective Avatars. This time, I actually did hold my own pretty well. Despite the strength Goblin had on his own, his power was cut in half, due to the fact that we were now the same size, and I knew Kung-Fu. Every punch he threw, I countered, and retaliated with ten better ones. Tackles? Easy sidestep, and kick to the back and a suplex for good measure. And don't get me started on his form, stance, or anything else. This guy threw punches so bad, even the goons at home made better sparring partners than him. I ducked one of his cross punches, blocked a wide swing that looked like he was clawing at me rather than punching, and quickly punched him in the neck (which would've been so much more effective if I wasn't hitting a lightning construct), which was followed by a swift left uppercut to backflip kick finished beautifully by a drop kick. I quickly got back up, and started wailing on Goblin's Avatar, not sure about what my plan was, or if I was even accomplishing anything, but battling furiously nonetheless. I probably would've pounded on him all day, but in the midst of my hyper beat down, I had completely forgotten one important fact; Goblin was better at this than me. Quicker than I could move, two blasts of lightning erupted from Goblin's Avatar arms, and pelted me in the face and chest. I flew up and over a good half a football field, and after restrengthening my Avatar, I got back up. Quick thing to mention, I didn't feel pain inside my Combat Avatar, but the blunt force was still enough to daze me, plus if I stopped concentrating hard enough, or was knocked with enough force, it could shatter like glass, leaving me royally screwed; just to clarify. I got up, but immediately had to roll out of the way of a another one of Goblin's lightning blasts. Again, it was all I could do to keep this oversized birdman up and running, how the hell did Goblin find the spare brain cells to use his other abilities. I dodged, flipped and rolled around for a good minute, avoiding Goblin's lightning blasts, and probably making a name for myself as an acrobat in the process. I managed to get within striking distance, but Goblin had already got another shot off. This time, on a reflex, I gave my Avatar a shield construct (something I should've remembered I could do), and blocked it; you better believe I went all Captain America on Goblin. I bashed him with my shield, swept it across his head, followed up with a roundhouse, and finished with a front kick. Goblin staggered a bit, but he was definitely not hurting, he created his own weapons, two war axes, and charged me again. I created a thunderbolt in my spare hand, and prepared for battle.

For the record, if this was a battle who dished out the most hits, rather than who could take the most, i'd win by a landslide. Goblin had next to no battle prowess, and I easily blocked his strikes, parried all of his slashes, and got off some good slashes of my own. If this were someone else, they'd be glowing Swiss cheese by now. The thing was, Goblin's Avatar refused to show any signs of damage or slowing down; even when I retreated a bit, hurled my thunderbolt at him and lit up the world with the explosion, all I really accomplished was sending him back a good 300 meters, and breaking his weapons. Goblin and I clashed again for another few minutes, but it was nothing spectacular on my end. Sure, I did the whole Jaden Smith Karate Kid thing, and kicked his ass around for a bit, but the one thing that Goblin did that really snatched the fight out of my control, was when he started using close range blasts with his melee attacks. It started with a blast of lightning from his mouth, which damn near shattered my Avatar's face, and knocked me on my back. I created a shield construct, blocked Goblin's stomp, and managed to push him off me, even squeezing in a leg sweep, but that was about all the leverage I got for the rest of the fight. Goblin upped the lightning blasts, attacking everywhere he could, and making those attacks mean a lot more with the force of a huge blast following the punch; within ten blows, my Avatar was in shambles, and I was so tired from maintaining it that I was on my knees, unable to try for another attack. Goblin zeroed in on me in a heartbeat, charged a massive Final Flash Cannon (as in big enough to cut a crater straight through a city), and nearly blew me to oblivion.

Again, this was a thing I had to do for the sake of countless others, vs myself. If I let Goblin's Hades Cannon tear through me, it would probably graze some sort of populated area, and with a blast that big, the term "graze" would probably result in about 300 deaths. I absorbed the remaining energy let in my Avatar, shifted into my Thunder Form, and charged my own Final Flash, but this time, actually giving it 100% of my ability, using both my power and the Power Grid to charge it. As I did this (it only took half a sec), I noticed how much I was hurting inside. The power building up in me was probably at like 98% rising, and it was gonna blow at any second. Now that I mention it, that could've been the reason why my Avatar fighting was so bad (yeah I know, excuses). Anyway, Goblin and I engaged in another high stakes power battle, this time, in the middle of a decimated crop circle. He was tough, and yes i'll admit it, almost beat me, but I was having none of it; I cheated, summoned a Mega Lightning Strike on top of Goblin's head, and in the fraction of a second that his concentration faltered. I poured on the extra power, and my Final Flash rammed into him with the force of a charging battleship. In the few seconds that followed my victory, I realized that with as much energy I had just used, I had probably endangered another city off in the distance. I quickly reeled in my Final Flash, making it take a hard left, rise into the air, and crash on top of Goblin in the form of a giant Chinese Dragon; by the way, doing that whole control and almost uncontrollable blast thing was about as hard as controlling a charging metro train with a chain leash. The explosion was so massive, the ground erupted in a minor tremor, sending waves of dirt in every direction about a mile out, and while I couldn't see Goblin, I knew he had to be at least winded. I mean I hit him with a lightning Shenron for God's sake, that had to have put some kind of dent in his form right? Yeah, a lightning blast that I blocked with a barely capable shield construct said otherwise. I got blasted into another crop circle and hit the dirt hard, my Thunder Form actually getting knocked out from the fall. I was disoriented, but not injured, or at least not yet. I looked up, and called f*(#!% bull$#!+, because at the point, Goblin was just pulling new abilities out of his butt. To put it into perspective, Goblin's Avatar, which was not only just slightly damaged, was falling on top of me like a damn meteor. I quickly dashed out of the way, but that was it. My body was at it's limit, starting to feel the way it did when it was developing it's Thunder Form, but 100X worse. My body (in Speed Mode), was vibrating uncontrollably, shifting in and out of Thunder and Storm Form in spans as short as microseconds, and you better believe that felt as bad as it sounded. I keeled over, struggling to breathe, to exist, to stay alive, but I felt like I was failing everything.

"_DON'T GIVE UP JASON!" _Zeus roared into my head. "_THIS IS IT, YOUR LAST TEST AS A WORTHY DESCENDANT OF THE ALL-FATHER OF OLYMPUS, BUT YOU MUST OUTLAST THE PAIN, YOU MUST EVOLVE BEYOND IT, YOU MUST UNLEASH THE STORM!"_

"_WHAT FOR!?" _I roared back at Zeus. "_NO MATTER WHAT, HE ALWAYS GETS STRONGER, HE ALWAYS COMES BACK, WHAT CAN A PUNK LIKE ME DO TO A MONSTER LIKE HIM!?"_

"_YOU CAN DEFEAT HIM JASON! THE POWER HE HAS IS NOT HIS OWN, IT IS A TRAVESTY, AN ABOMINATION! IN THE END IT WILL FAIL HIM BECAUSE HE IS NOT ONE WITH IT, NOT IN THE WAY THAT YOU ARE WITH YOUR UNIMAGINABLE MIGHT! LET IT BECOME YOU JASON, LET IT TRANSFORM, AND EMPOWER YOU! IF NOT FOR YOURSELF, DO IT FOR THE MORTALS YOU HAVE SWORN TO PROTECT, FOR THE FRIENDS YOU HAVE BONDED TO, FOR THE ADOPTED MOTHER WHO LONGS TO REUNITE WITH YOU!"_

That brought it all into focus.

In spite of the pain, doubt, and fear, I remembered that I had a job to do, people to protect, loved ones to get back to. I focused on how grateful I was to have Grant as a friend, and the rage I felt when Goblin had impaled my best friend with a sword. I focused on Allyson and her beautiful warrior goddess-like demeanor. I focused on how badly I wanted to make up with her, and how desperately she wanted me to finish Goblin. I focused on the family that was destroyed because

of me and Goblin, and how much I owed it to the kids to make sure this creep couldn't hurt anyone else anymore. Finally, I focused on my Mom, her crazy hair, which was probably red and green right now. I focused on her warm hugs, her delightfully goofy teenage dream lifestyle, her undying support of me, even in the face of my new circumstances; I couldn't fail now, I had to get up, I had to fight, I had to win!

"_NOW FINISH HIM JASON! UNLEASH THE TRUE POWER OF THE STORM!"_

I roared so loud, I knew for a fact I was changing into something, because it sounded like the call of a lion army. I felt my body expand and dissolve, like I was becoming everything and nothing. My vision started to blur as the winds picked up, and thunder boomed louder than tanks. In a matter of seconds, my vision was completely gone, as the power consumed me completely.

I don't know how long I wasn't able to see for, but i'd estimate it to at least three or four seconds. When I could see, I almost didn't know if I wanted to. I was floating hundreds of miles in the air. For miles out in the distance, black thunder clouds churned and flashed with more lightning than i'd ever know what to do with, and the air swirled with the familiar sound of a massive tornado. The only problem was, I couldn't see it; actually, I couldn't even see myself. I definitely felt where I was, and more importantly, I felt like I was in an amped up version of Storm Form, so where was I? I could see Goblin's Avatar on the ground, staring up at the sky and roaring at it like a dumb ass, but he was yelling a valid question: why was I hiding in the clouds? I felt around for myself, like the way you do when you can't see your hands, but feel for them in the dark. I flexed my fingers, which I could still feel, and when I finally caught up with the program, I nearly lost it. Near five miles away, I could feel, and literally see, a giant fist, big enough to pick up Manhattan, flex it's fingers according to my pacing. Forget being bonded with the clouds, I was one. I focused desperately, trying to piece together what was now my existence. I focused on making lightning flash, and literally felt it surge and build, more powerful than anything I had ever produced, in the miles upon miles of thunderclouds. Finally, I realized that there WAS a tornado spinning. It was beyond massive, a whirlwind big enough to swallow entire cities, strong enough to level mountains, but it wasn't in the distance, and it wasn't on the ground

It. Was. Me.

I had literally become a disaster movie tornado, it was who I was, and I didn't know how to feel about that at first; then Goblin decided that blasting the sky was a good idea. That got me mad, and before I could even think about anything else, a billion volt lightning volt Zeus Cannon rained from the sky, and thrashed Goblin on his head. I did that for a while, raining down bolt after bolt of lightning, each in it's own right big enough to trash a skyscraper, and even Goblin's Avatar was starting to crack under the pressure, but it wasn't enough for me, not yet. I focused on making myself spin faster, and descend lower. Don't get me wrong, at the current level of power I was spinning at, if I even tapped the ground, everything within a city perimeter level would be decimated, and sorry to say, but this part of Kansas, didn't have the buildings to spare. No, as I got closer and closer to the ground, the winds around Goblin's Avatar started to increase, lifting him higher and higher into the air; into my territory. The tornado around him started to close, become more intense and focused on him, while still maintaining that city wide range. I made my tornado (it's not gonna be called Tornado Form, that's just redundant), surge with thunder, spreading it all evenly though my violently swirling death cloud, and when I was satisfied with the effort, I let Goblin have it. Lightning flashed from every angle possible, trapping Goblin in what was like a monkey in the middle type game, but more electric and violent. Every second, his avatar was getting assaulted with high powered lightning bolts, leaving him with no way to retaliate or defend. Little by little, but on a frequent scale, his Avatar was breaking like sand dissolving in water, exposing more and more of the monster within, but I could go bigger, I could do better! On a hunch, I imagined an arrow, made of cloud and lightning, striking Goblin in the chest; it was like tornado me spat it out of it's stomach and hit Goblin with the a statue. From there, my imagination, and sadism took over. On top of all of the lightning pounding Goblin into a paste, he also had to deal with (ha, as if he could deal with this $#!+) giant fists, swords, missiles, lions, tigers, bears, and anything else cool and threatening I could pull off the top of my head. I at least had to hand it to Goblin, I was bashing him with enough force to devastate entire states, but he was taking it like a champ. I continued my assault by making myself swirl faster, and intensifying the lightning in the whirlwind. Next, I did something so mean spirited, and so border level torture, I was sure I was having a power trip. I decked Goblin the side with a lightning bolt, and launched him straight into the swirling, lightning infused, at least 500 mph death swirl. Without seeing it (I could still use Thunder Sense), I could tell that the winds were wreaking havoc on Goblin's Avatar, shredding it 5X as fast as I was when I was just having fun with it. I was tempted to let Goblin stay in the whirlwind until he became dust in the air, but he had other plans. I could feel his Avatar struggling against the winds, trying to get out, and I was having none of that. On a reflex, I actually grabbed at Goblin with what I forgot wasn't my hand anymore, however my powers seemed to get my drift. I felt my hand enclose around something that felt like an action figure, and pulled it back into the middle of the fray. Goblin was thrust back into the mayhem that was me, and now that I realized I could make my hands adjust to the sizes I needed them to be, I summoned my left hand, and presumed to beat the hell out of Goblin with my fists, while at the same time, restarting the lightning barrage. It took a little over a minute to do so, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly, but after constant pounding, and countless volts of lightning, I finally managed to get through Goblin's Avatar; the guy seemed so small from my perspective, it was like he was microscopic. Finishing him was gonna be easier than squashing an ant, but then I hit a bit of a snag. My body, and I could literally feel it, was tearing apart, my molecules were being spread too thin, they were dissolving into the air at an alarming rate; it literally felt like I was being brutally ripped apart.

"_ZEUS!" _I desperately thought to him. "_WHAT'S GOING ON, WHAT'S HAPPENING!?"_

"_Your cells have had all that they can take from performing such an extreme power! You need to restore your physical form, now! Make haste with it, lest you be spread to the wind forever!"_

I heard what Zeus was saying, and probably should've put a cap on the tornado right then, but I had come so far, Goblin was at his weakest point, I had to finish him now. Despite the burning pain that was my molecules being overstretched, I engulfed Goblin in a constant surge of lightning, shot at him from all angles of the tornado. I lifted him higher and higher into the air, simultaneously bringing, all of my mass into one focal point above Goblin. It only took 10 seconds, ten grueling, legendarily painful seconds, but the payout was beyond worth it. By the time I had managed to pull myself together in a rough Storm From, which was more black than grey, and field with the force of my F10 tornado, I used the split second it took for me to revert back to solid form, and flew into Goblin with everything I had. As I touched his chest with my fist, I willed all of the energy in my Storm Form to translate into concussive/bordering on nuclear energy, and knocked Goblin from 30,000 feet in the air, in less than a millisecond, as I flew with him for the ride. His armor completely shattered, leaving nothing left but his WWE wrestler like physique (what? armor or not, the guy was built like Hercules), and that was before we crashed to the ground, creating another shock wave so big, it was a damn good thing I was surrounded by miles upon miles of farmland, and even then, a few farm buildings (maybe some silos) probably got trashed. The very second we hit the ground, I didn't take any chances. No hesitation, no fear, I summoned my sword, and before Goblin could stop me, I ran him though and cut a line sideways though his chest, ignoring the sick feeling of dragging steel though flesh, and the thick purple slime that oozed through the wound. I thrusted my hand into the gash, and it only took me a second to get the feel of the stone, and rip it from his chest; of course things wouldn't calm down just right then. The millions of the dead that were supporting Goblin's power, were suddenly free, and were spreading out into the sky, faster than jets. Their power was overwhelming, their presence was just toxic, like rotting flesh being thrown into a power fan; they couldn't be allowed to run free, they had their turns, now it was time for them to get back where they belonged. I raised the stone into the air (purely on a hunch).

"NO!" I yelled to them, not caring about whether or not they could hear me. "COME BACK! GET BACK HERE NOW!"

Immediately, I felt the stone surge in power, and after a few seconds, in a quick black hole like move, all of the souls trying to escape were sucked into the stone in an intense surge of purple, and putrid rot stench. I breathed hard, trying to get my breath back, and I felt the stone move inside me. It was similar to the way the stone of Ares "chose" me, but a lot different this time. Instead of being pissed about my victory, the stone was giving me a type of indifferent response. It was like it was saying, "_Oh, you won? Humph. Well if you're gonna put me away, it's probably for the best anyway, but I don't care." _That didn't make me feel much better, but at least it was over, and now I could...I could… I

I started to cough up blood violently, and crashed to the ground. My body was starting to spaz up, and I was shaking uncontrollably, every nerve in my body feeling like it was melting. Zeus said that my whole F10 tornado thing was overworking my molecules, and I guess they weren't down with the whole instant repair thing; bummer. I couldn't move, I could barely make coherent thoughts, and it seemed like my healing factor was misguided, as if the voltage didn't exactly know how to fix me; double bummer. I remember coughing up more blood, the feeling of the stone in my hand, the pain of every molecule of my being slowly dying, and yet, in my moment of death, I remembered something cool. Lord of the Storms, that's what the Norn-Fates had called me. My brain pieced a few things together, and just like that, I had a name, a name that I liked, a name that I wanted to make official. It just goes to show, how ironic life can be sometimes; I had found my identity at the moment of my death. My vision was fading fast, the pain I was in, was starting to ebb away little by little, and I could feel my spirit being taken out of my body (I saw something that looked like a blurry angel, and some blonde chick on a Pegasus); I was so dead, even a glowing golden light was getting closer and closer to me.

(Allyson's Perspective)

Long story short, I healed Grant as soon as we got back to the Helicarrier, and the only reason I wasn't back out there with Jason, was because I had more work to do. Goblin didn't kill all of the heroes and agents back in that massive shock wave, the suits just activated their emergency protocols, and transported them all to the infirmary wing, where they were slowly dying from the death aura affects. I was working tirelessly to heal them all, singing about 30 songs, and staving off the effects of the death aura. I managed to save most of the heroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but there were some that were just too damaged to save, some who were already lost by the time I got to the infirmary deck; I prayed for their souls, and tired so hard not to break under the sadness of their deaths; now it was Jason's turn, and boy was he a project.

Grant and I were following his fight against Goblin with Fury's instant holographic screen. He did well on his own, despite getting smacked to Garden City, almost getting crushed to death at least 20 times, and bringing death to half a third of Kansas' agricultural district. I was impressed with his new powers, amazed at his ability to immediately adapt, and my heart broke at the sight of his face when he held that dead kid in his arms; I dismissed him for being heartless and savage, I hoped i'd be able to tell him how wrong I was. As soon as he beat Goblin, and started collapsing, Fury uploaded his coordinates to my communicator, Grant and I made our way to the deck of the Helicarrier as fast as we could, and soared to Jason's aid; the whole way there, I was breathing heavy, blinking tears from my eyes, and just praying that he'd make it, that i'd be able to save him. It only took about two seconds for us to get to Jason, and I immediately went to work. I went into Comet Speed, and sung a few notes over him, trying to sense where he needed healing. The feedback was odd. His body signs were normal, he was in no physical danger, so I had to go deeper. His vitals were a mess! His heart was being overworked, even for a speedster, his organs, were trying so hard to keep up with being demolecularized and remolecuralized, that i'm surprised they even knew what they were supposed to do anymore; still, it wasn't good enough, something else was clearly wrong with him, so I went even deeper. That's when I finally found the real problem, and I use the term loosely. His cells, which I could feel because there was still a bit of Sun Energy left in them from my enhancement, were deteriorating. His actual being was slowly withering away into nothing, and by the look on his face, plus the convulsions, Jason was dying quite painfully. There was so much work to do on him, I had to take a moment and coordinate myself.

"_Calm down Ally," _I desperately thought to myself. "_You can do this, he is not going to die."_

I summoned one of my knives, and handed it to Grant.

"What the-" he started.

"Grant," I said calmly to him, despite every nerve of my body wanting to explode. "Right now, I need you to listen to me very carefully, please don't talk, please no joking, I need you now or Jason's already dead."

"Of course," he immediately responded, his face so full of worry and willingness to help, it made me feel ashamed for talking to him like a child. "What do you need?"

"Take my knife, and carefully, very carefully cut through Jason's armor, rip it open as far as you can, and-"

Grant reached down with his bare hands, and ripped Jason's chest plate in half, like it was made of paper.

"Good enough?" he asked me.

"Super," I responded, before humming some notes under my palm, and then touching them to Grant's lips and hands, transferring the healing energy to them. "Now I need you to do CPR, breathe into his mouth deep for five breaths, and pump his chest ten times. Do that ten times, and then stop."

Again, Grant displayed an extreme level of control and maturity, by not recoiling, or making a homophobic comment at the thought of giving Jason mouth to mouth, he simply got into position, and went to work. I could feel my power spreading through Jason, healing his organs, and steadying his heart rate; at the very least, his seizure was calming down. While Grant was working on that, I steadied myself, got my songs in my head and started to sing. I started with "Father Can You Hear Me", followed my "Take Me To The King", and "He's Able"; what? I like Gospel too, sue me. After that, I literally just sung the lyrics to my seven favorite HSM songs, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. As I was singing, my goal wasn't to repair Jason's cells with my own energy; that would've been a disaster. Instead, I focused on creating a type of molecular net, that kept Jason's cells from spreading out further, and forced them together. The closer they were, the more the cells started to repair themselves, and the better Jason's situation was getting. Grant got done with his part of the healing, by the time I was still on "You Are The Music In Me", and looked at me expectantly. There was nothing else for him to do, but I did notice the stone of Hades lodged in Jason's right hand. I pointed at Grant, pointed at Jason's hand, and Grant finished the rest of the puzzle. I kept up with the singing, putting everything I had into making Jason better, never not once taking my eyes off of the goal of seeing him open his eyes again, for me to tell him how sorry I was for being such a b!+(# to him, to tell him how I REALLY felt about him. Yeah, yeah, I know, yesterday I hated him, now I love him, but that's how life works; you never know how much you love something, until you almost lose it, and I was determined not to lose anyone else close to me. After I had finished with the last HSM song, I kept up a hum, still trying to see what else was wrong with Jason. This time, it LITERALLY made no sense, his vitals were normalish, he was stable at a molecular level up to the point to where his cells were repairing themselves, so why was he still dying? I went deeper, beyond subatomic, beyond looking for biological factors, Jason was still dying, and I had to find out why. I honestly don't know how I did it, or even what I did, all I knew was that after what seemed like endless digging, I found something bright. Seriously, it was like I had reached some type of star system inside of Jason, it felt bright, vibrant, so full of goodness and compassion, but still so very full of sadness and grief. What was more troubling, was the fact that it was all going out. Jason's inner light, his soul was literally dimming, fading, being taken away; I had to stop it. Even though I could feel Jason's spirit being pulled away, even though I could feel the presence of someone way out of my league trying to pull him into the other side, I basically told that presence to f*(# off, and wait it's turn. Right now, Jason was mine, I wasn't done with him yet, and that was just that. I dug deep into all of the emotion I felt towards him. All of the anger, love, passion, compassion, and anything else I could throw in there. I wanted him to live, and I was gonna get what I wanted. I sung three songs, all of them by Demi Lovato. "Don't Forget", "Get Back", and "Give Your Heart A Break". I put everything I had into it, spreading my powers into Jason's soul, making it tether to his body again, yanking it away from the presence, and reigniting it. It took almost more strength than I had, but I managed to do it, and nearly wept in both fear and joy at the sound of Jason coughing and sputtering to life; the only problem was that he just wouldn't stop, and his seizure was getting worse. I didn't know what to do, that was all the healing I could give him, if it wasn't for his metabolism, he'd already be burning to cinders. Luckily, my communicator buzzed to life, and Mrs. Kennedy spoke through it.

"_Super-G, Sunbird!" _she yelled. "_Get him back to base now, he's barely holding on, we need to stabilize him now!"_

I didn't know what she could possibly do for Jason that could be possibly better than my Sun Healing, but I was desperate. Grant, pressed the blue button on his communicator, grabbed me and Jason, and in a flash of blue, we found ourselves back in the infirmary room. Immediately, things went chaotic, half a dozen paramedics grabbed Jason, put him on a stretcher. and started wheeling him away, leaving Grant and I to awkwardly follow. They were talking about a bunch of stuff I didn't know about as they wheeled Jason though the halls, although I did hear terms like energy levels, adrenaline, and something that had about ten syllables and to many letters in it's name. They rolled Jason into a different room, stuck some IV's in him, and started scanning him with as many flashes of slight as they could. Everyone was yelling, trying to get everything done at once, and my cries to Jason were drowned out in the noise. I tried asking what was wrong, what I could do to help, but I may have well been a child in a riot scene.

"The kid's bioelectrics are corrupted!" a guy said. "Too much foreign energy in his system, his body can't cope!"

My breath hitched, and I started to hyperventilate. I didn't do that to Jason, he was dying, I was saving him, there was no way this was my fault, oh God, please don't let this be my fault!

"We need to purge him!" another paramedic said. "Pure electricity to push the foreign element from his body, where's Storm, get Storm here!"

"She's still in room-"

"GET HER HERE NOW!"

A blue flash of light surged in the air, and Storm was between me, and Jason's stretcher. They hurriedly brought her up to speed, and she caught on fast. She started shooing everyone out of the room, and as the doors closed, metal encased them, and reinforced the windows. Thunder sounded off, and the windows were lost in the surge of lightning coming from her hands. I didn't know what was happening, but I could hear Jason's scream, his pain resonating on every level of my hearing. I lost it, and started sobbing uncontrollably, banging against the window, and screaming his name. Grant had to grab me by the waist, and carry me away from the scene, and I didn't have the heart to fight against him. I just sobbed and sobbed, as he carried me somewhere else to try and calm me down.

"_Just be ok Jason," _I thought to him, not sure if our telepathy was still working. "_Please, please be ok."_


	13. Chapter 13: Our Day Off

**Chapter 13: Our Day Off**

(Jason's Perspective)

Nothing tops off a near death experience quite like a prophetic dream, but i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. For the record, here's how the rest of my dying went (or as much of it as I can remember). My soul was being taken away from my body, but the angel and the woman on the Pegasus made no moves to grab me, or take me anywhere. They stood across from each other, looking at me intently, and in unison said one word: choose. I immediately understood. The angel represented Heaven (or at least Judgment), and the woman on the horse had to have been a Valkyrie, a one way taxi to Valhalla; they were asking me to choose which afterlife I wanted to go to. Honestly, I was torn between the two. I mean sure Heaven was Heaven, and with that came the promise of eternal peace, my own mansion, and being reunited with my parents, but Valhalla was an eternal Royal Rumble with gods, plus free food, I love free food, especially when it's good. So yeah, big decision to make (I was probably gonna choose Heaven), but before I could get around to spitting out an answer, I felt something like an invisible hand grab me from behind, and yank me downwards. At first I was scared that I was getting dragged into Hell, but thankfully that wasn't the case. I felt my soul being re-anchored to my body, as well as a familiar warming sensation. After that, things went blurry and painful again. I remember spazzing up and being in pain again. I remember getting rolled somewhere, lots of doctors, and the feeling of millions of volts getting zapped into my system, which for some reason was pure agony. I definitely remember screaming for a while before I blacked out, also hearing Allyson's voice saying something in my head; after that, the sweet bliss of unconsciousness rolled over me like a tidal wave.

So yeah, now comes the dream. As soon as the darkness rolled over me, I felt myself being whisked away again. I looked up (because I actually felt someone gripping me), and saw a white guy with a tan, wearing a red cape, golden armor, winged sandals, and a golden winged helmet. I knew it was Hermes, I mean I saw the guy in a vision just a few days ago, but I thought he was supposed to be defending Olympus with the other Olympians. I tried to say something, anything, but my voice wouldn't work, I couldn't say jack. Hermes looked down at me, smiled and waved with his free hand, and without warning, poured on a ridiculous amount of speed, carrying me God knows where. I remember going so fast, it was almost like I was a bolt of light. Then, just as fast as it started, the zoom died down, and I found myself somewhere I knew for a fact I didn't wanna be. For starters, I was in the middle of nowhere, and I mean that quite literally. Darkness was everywhere, there was no sky or ground, no stars or light, it was just hyperspace, pure, uncut, raw darkness. Yet even in this pit of despair, I could see one figure as bright as day. It was one of those Norse halls. Big, rugged looking, ancient, made of some type of dark matter, and really, really big. Seriously, I may have well been standing in front of a church 10X the height of the Empire State Building, and 5X as long as the Titanic, the hall was that big; what the hell could even be big enough to live in there? Hermes dropped me off at the stairs, and for a second, he looked like he was gonna knock on the door and pretend to deliver a pizza. Instead, he pulled a small vial of black liquid out of thin air, opened it, and poured it all over me. It felt cold, foreign, and primal. Unnatural wasn't the sensation I got from it, rather than something so ancient, it was like pure universe being poured all over me.

"_A gift from father Zeus," _he hastily whispered to me as he started to fade away_. "As a reward for your victory, the All-Father permits you a small passage of time in which you will be undetected by enemy forces that you observe. Listen and remember everything you hear, even Zeus cannot know all, and even we cannot stand against them. Find out what you can Jason, and use it to help you on your quest; excelsior!"_

Before I could shout at Hermes for being nuts, and complaining about the fact that if gods couldn't face the guy inside those doors, what was I supposed to do, I started to float high in the air, and once I was on the roof, I was thrusted through the dark walls, and inside the buildings. Whatever it was that was keeping me afloat, decided to put me on the edge of one of the support columns at the far end of the room where all the action was. Speaking of which, even if it was probably the center of all darkness, this place wasn't half bad. Fancy support columns held up the Norse structure, and made a nice line right down to the throne room. On either side of the halls, were lots and lots of tables, enough to easily seat millions upon millions of feasters (yeah they were dinner tables, but what the hell could you eat here?). The floors were polished black matter, with highlighted tiles, which had a nice cozy view of a giant swirling black hole at the bottom, giving people like me the feeling of doom, despair, a sudden fear of heights, and the urge to cry for mommy. Still, this was a pretty sweet place to crash for a while, or at least i'm sure everyone here thought so. Yeah, I was not alone. Lining up like a world army at attention, millions upon millions of dark things were lined up, saluting something in the throne room (I didn't turn my attention there yet). My enhanced vision wasn't kicking in, so I couldn't really get a good look at any of them, but I swear I saw horns, tails, and dark centaurs somewhere in the mix; that did not help my mood of them in the slightest. Finally, I worked up the courage to turn and look at the main event, ignoring that feeling in the back of my head saying: "_Stop! You do not wanna see that $#!+!" _Honestly, my brain was right. These people, whatever they were, were not the guys to f*(# with. For starters, they were the size of skyscrapers, big enough to use flagpoles as toothpicks. They seemed to have some sort of glow to them, like white lights used to define their features, otherwise they would've been as indistinguishable as their dark army. There were five of them in total, three guys and four girls. The guy in the center was big and burly, wearing heavy armor, and something that was like a Thor helmet X10. To either side of him were the two women. The one on the left looked like an older, bigger, more sinister version of Lady Sif (i've seen a few pics of her when she was doing stuff with Thor), on the right…well, I wasn't sure what to make of her, at most she resembled a cross between Dr. Strange, and a Norse queen with a masquerade type mask. Finally, the two other guys on the end were almost as burly and intimidating as their leader. The one on the left had on a lighter set of armor, a greekish looking helmet without the plume, with small horns jutting out of the side, and a long flowing cape tucked back under his back. He was absently spinning his sword on the floor like a spinning top, and the noise was like a million chalk boards being scratched at one time; not to mention the fact that the blade seemed to be making some sort of F3 level dark vortex as it spun around, almost like it was distorting reality. The guy on the right also looked something serious. His armor was just as bulky as his leader, and had the armor to match. He was wearing a helmet that covered most of his face (except his Duck Dynasty beard), that had rams horns jutting from the side, going down, and then curling back over his head. He was also sporting a weapon of his own, a one bladed war axe, with weird looking runes on it, long enough to use as a spear type weapon. He wasn't as restless looking as his friend on the other side, but I still got the feeling of him being someone who'd been cooped up for two long, and wanted to get out and exercise his muscles; except in his case, exercise might mean cutting a few cities in half. So yeah you get the picture, five powerhouses who could easily step on me as if I was an ant. That wasn't the main thing to be paying attention to. The main event, was the fact that on the floor, a good few feet away from the thrones (in their feet), stood Dr. Doom, clearer than crystal. I didn't know how it was that I was able to see him, but I just could. Same green cloak, same armored skin, same arms crossed over his chest, as if he was the one that owned this place; you'll forgive me if I rooted for the dark people to blast him into sludge. It would've made the rest of my life so much easier. The air in the room changed frequency, and I just caught on to the fact that the big guy was starting a sentence directed for Dr. Doom.

"_Victor Von Doom," _his thunder-like voice resonated through the hall, making me feel like my bones were under siege. "_The Ones Who Sit Above In Shadow have summoned you, to reconsider the agreements of our previous negotiation."_

I had no idea what agreements, or negotiations he was talking about, but i'd been in school for all my life, so I could interpret teacher talk. Basically, Dr. Doom for one reason or another, was working with, or under the Shadow Gods (I refuse to say the full name), and they were not happy with his results so far.

"_What do you do you mean, discuss?" _Doom responded, not even flinching at the idea of the fact that he had displeased cosmic dark gods. "_Nothing has changed significantly, my plans will still commence on schedule despite the minor interference,why do you waste my time with such banal conversation?"_

"_BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN PRODUCING ACHIEVEMENTS THAT UNDER RANK YOUR PROMISES!" _shouted the ram horn guy, ramming the butt of his axe on the ground so hard, he actually caused a blast of air that would've flung me against the wall if I was actually here physically.

"_Calm yourself Ragnar!" _the head Shadow God snapped at him. "_We have matters to discuss, and I will not tolerate more of your temper tantrums! Now be silent, unless you are willing to compose yourself, the way a God of Gods should!"_

Clearly this guy was being cooped up in this place for way too long, and was lashing out the way a restless child would, but apparently rank meant something here, because he slumped back on his throne and sighed.

"_As you wish Lothrook," _he responded. "_Please, continue on."_

If Lothrook detected that swipe of sarcasm, he didn't let on, and continued addressing Doom.

"_Dr. Doom," _he responded. "_Because of us, you had the power of six gods at your disposal. Your objective was a simple one, use that power to wipe away the current civilizations of Midgard, and remake it in whatever way you see fit, no strings attached. Instead, most of your power is either scattered across the ball of dirt and water, or in the hands of your enemies. What defense do you have to offer us for your nigh intolerable failure?"_

"_Dr. Doom does not fail!" _he snapped back. Clearly he didn't remember all the times The Fantastic Four/Avengers kicked his ass, but maybe he got knocked in the head one too many times. "_The deed would have been done by now, if that insufferable Stephen Strange did not scatter the stones quicker than I could harness their power. No matter, the device is complete, and all that is left to do is retrieve the stones, if Fury wants to collect them for me, then all the better."_

"_And you do not fear the possibility of your adversaries collecting all the prizes?" _asked the Shadow goddess with the mask and fancy robes. "_Have you even prepared for the possibility that your own power might be used against you?"_

"_That fool Fury won't know what to do with the powers of gods," Doom responded. "He'd just lock them away somewhere, someplace I would eventually discover and take by force. Men like Fury fear power, I do not, and with his Avengers dogs scattered to the wind, he has no one left to hide behind."_

"_What of the children?"_

The put a microscopic halt in Doom's demeanor, like a spec of dirt had found it's way into his eye.

"_What?" _he almost shouted at her. "_Those adolescent gnats? You would believe that three mutant children, who are just coming into their powers, could ever hope to stand against the might of Doom!?"_

"_Twice they have battled your forces," _the guy across Ragnar said. "_Twice they have emerged victorious, even while your warriors were powered by the might of Ares and Hades, it would be unwise to underestimate them, mortal ruler."_

"_Venom was merely a brute I used to bolster my ranks. _Doom said. "_He could not even hope to overcome the nuisance known as Spider-Man, much less harness the savage power of the god of war; his defeat offers no consequence. Furthermore, let it be duly noted that you plucked one of my own, Green Goblin, from my headquarters without prior knowledge or preparation. He was also a fool that could not hope to tame the powers of a god; his death will not be mourned, but why did you interfere?"_

Damn. Doom was kind of a dick, I mean I killed the guy myself, and I felt more grief for him than Doom did. If this was the guy my friends and I were supposed to fight against, at least I had confirmation that mercy was something that was completely off of the table; if we fought, it would most likely be to the death (assuming it had to go that far).

"_Because," _said the Ragnar. "_Bjornskadi and I grew tired of your false bravado, and pretenses of an easy victory. While the children were fighting the battle you should have been fighting, what were you doing? We needed a test, an experiment to see which faction had the most conviction in their cause. Say whatever you wish Doom, but the boy has the divine favor of Zeus, and single handedly defeated your lackey, even when he was the wielder of death, even when we made his thoughts clearer, and gave him a single mission to accomplish; you do indeed have much to fear, and much to prove."_

This time I could see Doom shift ever so slightly (my vision let me see what it wanted me to); clearly, the Shadow Gods were getting under his skin.

"_As i've previously stated," _he continued. "_I was aware of Fury's little play, the instant he instigated Strange to scatter the stones to the wind. True, his little task force is formidable to lesser beings, but not to Doom. I was more than willing to let them walk away with the stone, it will be the last victory they ever achieve. From now on, my cohorts will retrieve the stones by any means necessary. Failures will not be tolerated, and enemies will be dealt with swiftly and harshly; besides, that little display of power did not frighten me at all, i've defeated plenty of storm bringers far beyond the talents of that inferior insect."_

Yeah, keep on talking buddy, let's see you say that to my face (yeah, I know he would, and much worse).

"_Your previous Pyrrhic victories mean little to us," _said the dark Lady Sif lookalike. "_How many times have you been on the cusp of victory, only to fail due to your arrogance and stupidity. Do not forget, mortal who pretends to be a god, we were the ones who gave you this opportunity at immortality, through your dreams we instructed you about the existence of the stones, and how to corrupt the magic that held them in solitary confinement. We were the ones who coaxed the enemies of the Greek Pantheon to indulge their dark impulses, and wage a suicide attack Olympus, we are the ones who have seen the rise and fall of gods, we are the masters of fate, and destiny; you would be wise to remember that, and fulfill the assignment we have set out for you."_

Again, maybe it was the swirling dark voices, the immense size of the Shadow Gods, or the fact that I was trying to hide on my pedestal, waiting every moment for the enchantment Hermes put on me to fail, but I felt the fear of them deep in my soul. I just knew everything they were saying was true. They had scattered the Stones of Olympus, they had sent Grant, Allyson, and I on a death scavenger hunt against Doom, and God knows how many other villains. These guys were bad news, like universe level bad, and I got the feeling that this was just step one. Maybe it was all my experience with bully empires (one bully who runs the whole student body in one way or another), but I knew the sound of a person who offered power, or an opportunity to someone weaker, in an attempt to further their own agenda. Whether Doom knew it or not, he was a tool, and these guys were the real ones running the show. Hell, maybe that's why they chose him; his arrogant, 'I always think i'm king of the hill' attitude, was probably blinding him to the fact that he was way out of his league. Still, Doom stood strong, and exchanged words tic for tac.

"_If what you say is true Lagertha," _he started. "_Then why do you constantly meddle in the affairs of us mortals. You can play Masters of the Universe all you wish, but I see the truth in your eyes. You are all slaves, captives to this realm. You need my aid to escape, you need me to free you, probably to take vengeance on Asgard for whatever reason. Make no mistake, I care not for that realm of primitive D-List gods, all I desire is the earth, and all that it entitles me with. We have a common enemy, heroes and gods alike, those who would defy our rule, our divine right to reshape the realms as we see fit. I will not fail, the stones will be mine, I will burn my obsolete earth away, and reshape it and it's inhabitants into a master race worthy of Doom. As for those children that you fear so much, they will be exterminated if they get in my way again; Dr. Doom is supreme, and he will crush all who opposes him. All._

He just threatened Shadow gods. It was subtle, and they probably didn't catch it, but he just threatened them hard. Also, for once in all the times i've heard Doom open his mouth, he was right about one thing; those guys were afraid of Delta Force. I mean, Goblin wouldn't stop raving about Allyson when the stone of Hades got into his system, and if the Shadow Gods were the ones who ordered the execution, either they had something against the sun (which they probably did), or they thought she was a threat. Dunno why they would (no offense to her), but Doom definitely called them out on their bull$#!+. Furthermore, they didn't even bother to deny it, they just continued on like they didn't even hear him.

"_Prove it," _said the fancy robe lady. "_Finish them, tomorrow, they will be lurking in New York City, hiding amongst the mundane humans, making play that they are still one of them. Finish them where they stand, and you will have regained the respect and the trust of Torvunn, and The Ones Who Sit Above In Shadow._

" _I do not engage in battle with ants," _Doom sneered at them. "_It is beneath me. However, if it will mean fewer of these trivial conversations, I will arrange for their deaths; the little ones want to be heroes? I'll give them the honor of a hero's death, grand and public."_

The Shadow Gods looked at each other, looked at Doom, and nodded as one. All of a sudden Lothrook froze, and when he brought his head up, he was looking dead at me, I froze in fear, unable to react or even breathe. his eyes glowed bright, but before he could blast me to atoms, I felt a yanking sensation, like someone was pulling me with a fishing reel, and I was yanked away from the Shadow Gods' presence at what had to be like 100X the speed of light (and believe me, I knew enough about that to make a comparison). I zoomed to parts unknown, my vision nothing but a blur of colors as I drifted into unconsciousness in my own dream.

I opened my eyes and breathed in heavily, taking in my surroundings as fast as possible. I saw tiles, roof tiles, ok I was in some sort of building. I looked to either side of me. There were desks filled with medical supplies, an IV was strapped into my left arm, and I was on some kind of hospital bed. My battle suit was gone (how'd it get off?), and I was wearing a white T-Shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem on it; my sweatpants remained undisturbed or changed. I felt all over myself, and breathed in a sigh of relief, I was back at S.H.I.E.L.D., I was alive. Granted, I didn't feel up to scratch. My body ached a little bit, plus I felt like something in me wasn't exactly packing a full tank of gas, but that was a question for another day, probably for S.E.R.A. to answer. Anyway, All of the remaining fear and anxiety I had immediately melted away when my door suddenly slammed open. Allyson stood in the doorway, her face a unique mix of awe, relief, and just sheer joy. The spark in her eye made the sun seem like a candle in comparison, i've never seen anything so bright or full of passion. She was in her pink S.H.I.E.L.D. pajamas (LOL, seriously S.H.I.E.L.D., pink?!), her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her brown eyes were almost like fire, and I couldn't help but smile at the sight of her. She walked towards me really fast, saying my name with joy, and wrapping me in a tight hug. I was still under the pretense that she still hated my guts, so this came as a bit out of left field, but I didn't question it, I hugged her back and decided to go with the flow. Grant came in shortly afterwards (the idiots must have been waiting for me forever), dressed in sweatpants and a blue hoodie, and just like Allyson, he was super hyped to see that I was alive; hell, he didn't even bother with any formalities, he shouted "Dude!" at the top of his lungs, made his way to my bedside, and wrapped me in a huge bear hug, nearly breaking my back in the process.

"What's up man!?" he asked me after letting go. "You're looking well for someone who nearly died!"

"Well you know," I played it off. "Death is overrated anyway, but how are you man, how's everything?"

"It's all good," he said, lifting his shirt to show his unpierced skin. "Allyson helped me out big time, lots of others too."

"It was nothing," she quickly said. "Just did what I could, didn't even save them all, I barely was able to save you, Jason."

"You saved me?" I asked her. "How?"

She told me the story of how she and Grant found me just outside of Garden City. How they used her Sun Healing to patch me up at a molecular level, even going so deep as to tether my soul back to my body.

"It took everything I had Jason," she continued, her voice starting to break. "And even then, I almost wasn't strong enough. You were dying, I could feel you dying, and I just, I almost-"

"It's ok," I said, grabbing her shoulder. "You did it, you saved me, you're-"

There are some things my Speed Sense simply can't prepare me for. Bullets? Easy. Punches, kicks, energy blasts, swords? All child's play. However, when it comes to a kiss, my Speed Sense was dead in the water. Allyson quickly reached out, grabbed my face, and pulled me into a deep passionate kiss. I was surprised as hell, but as soon as my lips touched hers, as soon as that vanilla/spearmint taste made contact, I was lost in the moment, kissing her back with just as much fire and tenderness. It felt so good, like warm fire coursing through every ounce of my body. Her kiss was strong and firm, a little aggressive even, but still soft and sweet. I honestly wanted to pull her in closer, make the contact last longer, but I had to let her make that decision; no need to press my luck when I was already golden. She held the kiss for a good seven seconds (imagine how long that've been in Speed Mode), and then just as quickly as she started it, she pulled away, a look of shock and disbelief on her face. I thought I had f*(%# up big time, I thought she was gonna hit me, or run away in embarrassment; instead, she broke down in tears, and hugged me tighter than before, her face buried in my chest. I held her tight, feeling an odd mixture of butterflies, and awkwardness. Don't get me wrong, I soothed her with my voice, and Grant also stepped in to offer his comforting words (probably knowing i'd fail on my own), but I was new at this, the whole being with other people for more than I had to vibe, it took a little while to shake off; luckily, Allyson and Grant were the perfect gateway into socialness. So yeah, Allyson cried for a good few minutes, not saying a word, just trying to pull herself together, which I was totally fine with; hell, I wasn't in the best mental or emotional state either, I almost died! After she got a hold on her crying, she loosened the grip she had on me, and sighed in relief.

"You...al-almost…died…J-Jason." she gulped. "I was so mean to you, I was so stupid, and scared, and judged you on complete bull. I'm so sorry I shut you out, I would've never forgiven myself if your last thoughts of me were how much I didn't care about you; that is so far from the truth."

"It's ok Allyson," I said while absently stroking some of her hair. "I wasn't the most stand up guy to start out with anyway, I know I get angry sometimes, I know sometimes I may look like i'm just a hood, but you gotta believe me, I….I mean..I just-"

"It's ok. I know."

She did? I didn't even know! Aww f*(# it, it all works out for me in the end, so why question it?

"You two are adorable," Grant bluntly said. "You two are truly adorable, and you're improving, breaking down false perceptions, getting closer, learning to….I ruined the moment didn't I?"

Allyson and I nodded, but she quickly pulled him and myself into a group hug.

"I don't wanna lose any of you guys," she said. "I love you guys so much."

"We love you to Allyson," Grant said. "Right Jason?"

"Y-yeah," I stammered out. "No doubt."

I suck at this.

"Oh guys!" I said suddenly, causing them to break the hug. "I finally did it, I came up with an awesome code name, it might sound odd at first, but give it a sec, it'll catch on. Ready? Storm-Lord."

They looked at me quizzically at first, just like I knew they would, but slowly, the lights started to go off in their head, and Grant dapped me up; Storm-Lord was a go.

"Speaking of which, Mr. Storm-Lord," he continued. "That was some sick show of power back there, I mean sure you didn't exactly end on the best note, but that lightning flying thing, the airbending, that fuzzy punch thing you kept doing, and the tornadoes!? Dude, you were unstoppable, you totally gave Goblin the business!"

I winced at the thought of Goblin, I mean sure it was in self defense, but I kinda killed a guy, that'd have to get some getting used to.

"Yeah well," I responded. "No big deal, just doing what I had to."

"Well you did good man," said Grant. "Thanks for picking up the slack for me, you guys saved my life, cleaned up my mess, i'm sorry I put you in danger, Jason."

"Dude, that was so not your fault, you did your best."

"Wasn't good enough."

"Enough," Allyson stepped in, grabbing both of our hands firmly. "Now you two listen to me now. You both did amazing, we all did our parts as best as we could. There is no 'I should've done better', there is no feeling sorry for yourselves, not on my watch. We saved the world again today, and no matter what else, no matter what happened, even if we didn't save them all…we still saved countless others. We'll get better, we'll be a better team, but please, don't beat yourselves up, we're alive, we got the stone, and we saved tons of people today; nothing else matters right now, nothing."

"Couldn't have said it better, Ms. Grace," said a familiar commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Fury walked through the door, followed by Mrs. Kennedy and Storm. They looked remotely ok (especially Storm, and who was undoubtedly caught in the blast), and for the first time since being here, I wasn't under the impression that I was in trouble; they genuinely wanted to check on my well being. Fury took a seat next to me, while everyone else kinda shuffled around where they could get comfortable.

"How you feeling son?" he asked me.

"Pretty ok," I answered. "I still feel...not all here, but i'm gradually feeling better, thanks for the concern."

"Not a problem Mr. Fuller, although truth be told, you should be thanking your friends, not to mention Ororo here. You consumed a lot of Hades energy in you, when you absorbed that nuclear blast of yours, the energy almost killed you from the inside out; your friends kept you alive, Storm electrified the energy out of your system."

I looked at Storm awkwardly, not really able to convey my gratitude towards her effectively.

"Thank you," I managed to get out. "Thanks for saving my life."

Again, it must have been 'let's show Jason love' day, because reached out, gave me a hug, and lightly tousled my dreads.

"You are most welcome Jason," she said politely. "I look forward to teaching you how to control your storm, you are indeed a powerful elementalist."

I blushed, told her thanks again, and turned back to Fury.

"So do you want a debriefing or something?" I asked him.

"Unnecessary," he said. "We've seen enough for today, all that matters is that we have the stone, I just need to ask you something, all of you."

Grant, Allyson, and I looked at Fury quizzically. He didn't have his whole commander demeanor flipped on anymore, now he looked kinda like a dad, who realized he's put his children on a roller coaster they weren't old enough to ride. His face aged like five years in a second, his shoulders slumped, and he actually rubbed his hands over his face, and deep breath before uttering a single word.

"When I started this task force," he started. "I was under the pretense that this mission would always be covert, out of sight. I knew you were all in for some fights against the world's most dangerous super villains, but your powers were off the charts, your fighting abilities were enough to handle even the worst of em', and your teamwork was nothing short of prodigy level; I truly believed that together, you would be strong enough to never be in a position where you would actually be an inch from death's doorstep. Because of my decision, you've all been faced with unimaginable horrors and challenges. You've faced death, seen others die, and now hold the burden of the death of innocent lives, which was not for a single second any of your faults. Forget the Fates, forget prophecies, gods, magic, and whatever else makes an average joe's skin like mine's crawl. We make our own fate, we choose our own destinies, and it was wrong of me to take away your liberty, and your right to say no."

He paused again, and I got a pretty good intuition about where this lecture was going.

"Mrs. Kennedy has three of our fastest jets, prepped, and ready to take you to airports nearest to your homes. As S.H.I.E.L.D. interns, you have been on our payroll since you're first mission to the Amazon, receiving 1,000 dollars per successful mission, and extra thousand for bringing in super villains, plus 50 dollars a day; as of now, you all have 4,100 dollars to your names. Should you wish to abandon this task force, all of the money will be yours, and you will never have to set foot on this Helicarrier again. The choice is yours, and I will not hold it against you if you choose to leave, I only hope you can forgive an old dog for bringing three pups into a war meant for grown-ups. Do you choose to stay, or leave."

This was way too good to be true. I could leave now, go home to mom with a wad of cash in my bank account, and not have to worry anymore about a war that I didn't wanna fight. I won't lie, I was an inch away from taking the deal, and making my way; but then I stopped and thought about what I was doing. If I left, Grant and Allyson would be without a leader. I knew them, they were way too strong, resilient, and determined to give up just because things got hard. The Avengers were still scattered, most of the remaining heroes were also apart, or if unfortunate enough to get caught in the blast, were probably not 100% on top of their game. If I left, Fury would be in a bind, Doom would have a bigger jump on the race, and I would probably be responsible for the end of the world (assuming Grant and Allyson actually failed). No, I couldn't leave. I owed it to Grant and Allyson to see this through. I owed it to the world to keep the stones out of Doom's hands. I owed it to those kids to make sure nobody was hurt in the same way they were.

"No," I told Fury after a brief pause. "I started this, and i'm gonna finish it. We all knew the risks of being a part of this team, we've all had to fight for our lives, and we've all had to come to terms with the possibility of death in our own ways. Whether or not destiny is involved, I refuse to let people like Doom or Goblin get their hands on something as powerful as these stones, I refuse to let them hurt anybody else ever again. The answer is no Fury. You won't get rid of me that easy, i'm staying, i'm gonna get the stones, and i'm gonna punch Doom in the face with my best Thunder Fist. I'm staying, and i'll fight until I physically can't fight anymore."

"That goes double for me sir," Grant immediately followed. "Yeah, I almost died, and no that didn't feel all that great, but i'm still here, and i've still got a job to do. Besides, with The Avengers away, you need all the muscle you can get, and i've got plenty of that. We're heroes now, and heroes don't give up, ever. Even if we did go home, Jason and I barely have anything worth returning too, now that we've been outed as mutants. No, i'm not running from it, but I am determined to use my powers for something worthy, something worth fighting and dying for, something that'll make me proud to call myself a mutant. Besides, if we're actually on payroll, even though i'd do it for free, I kinda like the idea of making some more mula before I go home; plus, this'll be some good padding for my resume if I ever wanna roll with The Avengers or The X-Men!"

We all busted out laughing, even Fury and Mrs. Kennedy chuckled a little bit before stopping to let Allyson get her two cents in.

"Well, I dunno guys," she started somberly. "After today, things are different, I dunno if I have the strength to go through another mission like this one."

The entire room held it's breath, all eyes were on Allyson, who had just uttered words that we all never expected to hear from her mouths. She paused for a moment, keeping us in a net of suspense and dread (especially me), and then busted out into a huge grin.

"Just kidding!" she said, grabbing both mine's and Grant's head, pulling us in for one of those selfie hugs. "No way i'm abandoning you guys, not now, not ever. It wasn't even a question Colonel Fury, i'm in this till the end."

I (and probably everyone else in the room), breathed in relief, and laughed a little bit longer, before calming down, and giving the floor back to Fury.

"Alright then," he said, that commander swagger kicking in gear again. "First thing's first, you three need better protection gear, Mrs. Kennedy?"

"Already on it sir," she said, pulling a virtual screen up out of thin air. "I've already arranged for the suits to be dipped in another layer of Titanium/Steel liquid fiber, that'll improve defense and durability tenfold, without sacrificing any mobility capabilities. On top of that, i'm equipping the suits with Mutant Power Dampener Energy reflectors, bioelectric defenses that'll keep enemy power sets from effecting internal biology, mental shield emitters, in about 8 hours, you three will be walking fortresses."

"Speaking of which," I said. "What time is it, how long was I out?"

"It's 12:15 A.M., you've been out for about ten hours," Mrs. Kennedy responded. "I hope you're feeling ok, I had S.E.R.A. run a scan on you while you slept, you'll get those results back, plus another detail of your new abilities in about another three hours."

Ok, that was weird. For the first time since I knew her, Mrs. Kennedy actually showed concern for my well being, like it'd actually ruin her day if I died. Even I couldn't help but feel good about that.

"And until such time," said Fury. "You three need to get some rest. Tomorrow, i'm giving you the day off, as well as access to the money that you have earned up until this point. You have a free day in New York City to shop, eat, tour, whatever you want, although i'd probably make a trip to a tux/dress rental first if I were you."

He pulled out three white tickets, engraved with fancy golden lines, with a picture of a Christmas tree on it. He handed Grant, Allyson, and I a ticket, and my jaw dropped a little when I saw the words: St. Mark's Annual Christmas Ball, Ages 15-17, on it. Why was this a big deal? Every year, on top of donating stuff to the homeless, St. Mark Industries hosted the biggest Christmas bashes in every major city across the world. The parties were separated by age (high school/adults), but they were meant for the wealthy. The only way you got in, was if you were somebody, or if you knew somebody. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't get excited for some cheesy Christmas ball if it wasn't worth getting excited about, and from the legends and reputation, these parties did not disappoint, on any level.

"Dude," Grant said, a dumbstruck look plastered on his face. "These parties are legit! How'd you get a hold of these, they usually get sold out within the first two months of the new year!"

"Long story short," Fury said. "Stark owed me a favor, and St. Mark Industries owed Stark a favor. The food chain did it's magic, and I got these tickets printed off within the last hour. Thank you Fury, you're welcome children."

We all hastily thanked Fury for the tickets and he took his leave, Mrs. Kennedy trailing behind him.

"So," I said to Grant and Allyson. "Where we gonna get our rentals,"

"Eww," Allyson recoiled. "We are not showing up to a party of this caliber, with average, boring, dress attire. If we're gonna do this, we do it my way, the right way. I know a place in New York that sells suits and dress just right for this occasion, my mom orders stuff from this place all the time. Don't worry, we're still gonna go where you guys want, and I won't make you spend all of your money on your suits, but we do that first, and I have final say on all attire decisions. Besides, if you're gonna be my date, then you gotta clean up, Jason."

"What?" I stammered.

"You heard me. You're gonna be my date, and we are gonna be the baddest couple to set foot in that party, like it or not."

Her face was so sexy, seductive, and the perfect amount of diva. I felt my willpower melt into a puddle, and simply smirked and shrugged.

"Don't worry Grant," she continued. "You're gonna look so good, all the girls will be dying to have a piece of you, I guarantee you'll have a few companions before the night is up. Alright you two, let's get to bed, we gotta eat breakfast at 6, be on the ground at 7, and get a lot of shopping done in at least under eight hours before getting back to the Helicarrier, and getting ready for the dance; by the time we're done with the first half of the day, you're gonna wish we were still on duty. Now chop chop, off to bed now."

She didn't take anything else for an answer. She started shooing Grant out of the room, who flashed me a 'WTF' look, and gave me a kiss on the cheek before leaving herself. Man, that girl could take charge. In response, I turned over, pulled the covers over me, and drifted off to sleep again. I probably should've told them about my dream, about the Shadow Gods, Doom, and the possibility of us actually walking headfirst into a battle; but I was too tired, the mood was too sweet, and I didn't wanna spoil the moment. Hopefully tomorrow, everything would go according to plan, and we'd get a nice peaceful day (or as peaceful as you can be as a shopper in New York, that city will eat you alive for a pair of shoes).

I didn't have another dream, but then again, i'd filled my quota for weird dreams. However, if you count waking up at 5:30 in the morning as surreal, then that totally counts. The infirmary staff (which was always on duty), came by, at Allyson's request, removed the IV from my arm, and put a fresh set of clothes for me to wear on the table. I grabbed the bundle, made my way to my room, took a quick shower, and got dressed. Today, I was wearing an orange sweater, followed by a light hoodie, followed by a medium red jacket, followed by a heavy black jacket, with matching mitts, boots, and a snowcap. If you think this is overkill, you've clearly never been in New York during the holiday season. After getting dressed, I went down to the cafeteria with Grant and Allyson, who were more or less wearing the same attire, except Allyson was wearing all white, and Grant had a red heavy coat. We ate a truckload of food (I was so unbelievably hungry), and after we finished, we went to the deck of the Helicarrier, and waited for our ride. Apparently, we were getting flown into the city, but there were no jets on standby, no pilots scheduled for takeoff, and I doubt Times Square had a parking space big enough for a fighter jet. Still, we waited a good two minutes for our ride, before hearing the sound of some type of flying mobile. Coming in for a landing behind on the runway, was an honest to God, flying mini van. The wheels were turned sideways, emitting some kind of propulsion, but they quickly returned to a natural state as soon as they landed on the pavement. The windows rolled down, and Agent Coulson, dressed in his usual Men In Black suit, looked at us with slight amusement (must've loved this part of his job).

"Shall we get moving?" he asked. "The flight will take about a half hour. Gotta beat that holiday rush, am I right?"

Grant, Allyson, and I grinned while climbing into the car. Again, the mini van wasn't the fastest thing in the world, but it did ok, I mean supersonic was nothing to complain about. Grant claimed shotgun (again), but at least Allyson and I were less awkward around each other now. Yeah, LESS awkward. Sure, the anger was gone, but we kinda made out for a little bit, that was gonna stick around in the air for a bit. Still, the ride to NYC was kinda fun, or at least the pastime entertainment was. Coulson thought it would be helpful to put my updated stats on the TV screens, and I was subject to a 10 minute lecture on the science of my new powers. I won't give you a rerun (you already know about Thunder/Storm Form), but long story short, I had a new energy reserve that absorbed and augmented air, that was why I felt so overstuffed when I was fighting Goblin; I literally absorbed about 10 miles of cloud pressure. Also, when I become a tornado, I release all of that energy at once, meaning if i'm not careful, i'll lose it all, and will be unable to use my Storm Form, or go tornado. After the presentation ended, followed by another 20 minutes of flying, we finally touched down at 100 Hudson Street at some store called Thom Browne. We parked around back, and Coulson deactivated the camouflage device on the car (what, you thought we just flew a visible car down into NYC?). The place definitely looked like a rich people store. It was big, rectangular, and silver. It had a small glass entrance to it's far right. If I wasn't mildly wealthy for a 17 year old, this place would be off limits to me, and even then the building was imposing and intimidating, it was almost daring me to come inside; Allyson was more than up for the challenge, and basically strutted through the doors, leaving Grant and I to trail after her.

The inside was just as imposing. Clean white floors, designer suits, dresses, and other clothing hanging on racks and walls. To either side of the store were changing rooms, and dead in the center, about 30 meters away from the entrance, was a white guy behind the clerking area, who looked like he was in his mid-forties, with thinning brown hair, grey eyes, and a composure so pristine, he was no doubt the owner of this place. As we walked to the counter (making sure to stay behind Allyson), his gaze intensified ever so slightly, it was like he saying: '_Who are these children that dare to enter my realm?' _Yeah, I made a note to talk as little as possible, as Allyson stepped up to parley with him.

"Good morning," she said, making me jump in my head. It was like she was a different person. Her voice became much more regal, refined, and a little bit entitled; and this was without her being in Super Sunbird. Hell, the guy at the counter was more surprised than I was, actually deciding to take her half seriously now.

"Good morning indeed young lady," he said with his fancy aristocratic accent. "How may I help you on this fine day."

"My companions and I," she continued, upping the regalness a little. "We've been invited to St. Mark Industries Annual Christmas Ball, for the high schoolers of course."

"Really?" the guy asked her, kinda giving Grant and I looks of minor disgust, like he could accept that Allyson was invited, but not us. "Is this your first time young lady? You know, i've been to five of these events myself, and I can tell you from experience, the pleasantries are to die for."

"Is that so, Mr. Baz is it? Yes indeed, this will be our first time attending such a ball, and it is my sole mission to make sure that we are the center of the show, the crown jewels of the party, and don't worry, i'm certain that I can manage by myself; them included."

Mr.. Baz was actually taken aback by this, almost offended by the thought of an amateur telling him he wasn't needed.

"Is that so?" he asked her. "Well then madam, what did you have in mind for you and the gentleman? As i'm sure you know, this ball is one of the most anticipated celebrations of the year. Not any hoodlum can be invited, and as such, showing up in anything other than the best garments will not demand the attention you seek in the ballroom."

Shots fired. Shots were fired, but Allyson didn't miss a beat.

"I am quite aware of that," she responded. "Which is why i'll be requesting outfits from your Christmas Season Exclusives for this year. I need something in red. Supple yet sexy, and completely unique. When all the girls see me, I want them to wish they'd have bought the dress, but didn't because they both overlooked, and didn't look high enough for it. Also I need it to be comfortable to dance in, i'm not one of those girls who just sits and models, I wanna have fun."

Mr. Baz nodded, obviously Allyson was off to a good start.

"For my date Jason," she continued, turning her glance to me. "Something black and red will suit him just fine, but again, something supple and unique; something that says 'i'm handsome, i'm fun, but i'm taken'. Silk would be nice, it'll be just right for his build."

"And for the other gentleman?" Baz asked her, obviously consenting to the idea that she had the game on lock.

"White," Allyson said. "Snow white if you please, silk as well, it'll compliment his skin just nice, and more so, it'll make him stand out to the crowd more; he's going solo this evening, lucky for the ladies. A green shirt and striped tie will finish the combination off nicely. On top of the holiday colors, green also seems to be his color. Finally, give him a fedora with a green strap, I just have a feeling he can make it work beautifully."

"Very well then," said Baz. "If you three will follow me, my employees will get your measurements, and i'll escort you to the Exclusives afterwards."

Measurements took freaking forever. From the arms, legs, waist, even feet, those assistants didn't mess around, it took like 10 minutes a person. Still, I would've preferred the measuring, compared to what came afterwards. Baz led us to the back of the store, into something that resembled a really big closet, or a small warehouse. There were suits, and dresses galore. From black silk tuxedos, to bright blue with glitter patterns, and everything in between. I was no fashion expert, but even I could appreciate the sheer amount of designer gear, even if I nearly fainted when I walked by a pair of pants worth 500 dollars. Allyson and Baz walked straight to the right side of the room, where all of the designer dresses were, and this is where things started to suck. When I heard the color red, I immediately thought that Allyson would only have a handful of outfits to pick, meaning we'd get out of here in record time, and avoid all the changing, complementing, changing again, and complementing again. Yeah, when I saw a rack that had over 50 dresses on it, each with it's own design, color variation, and set of heels, my heart sank, and I got ready for what was sure to be a long and painful exercise; Allyson did not disappoint, and here's a little tidbit of what I had to go through for 10 DIFFERENT DRESSES!

Dress #1: Red, fluffy, had green glitter Christmas tree patterns, made her look absolutely stunning.

Allyson: How do I look?

Me: Great!

Allyson: What do you mean great?

Me: Just great?

Allyson: So i'm only great, i'm not beautiful?

Me: No you are, I meant-

Allyson: I knew this wasn't the one, the frills throw my shape off, I look fat, plus who puts trees on a dress, this isn't a rainforest convention. I need to change, don't move!

Grant and I were just sitting there (she refused to let us pick out our own clothes), and when she left, Grant looked at me like '_seriously dude?'_

"What?" I asked him. "I thought she looked good, she did look good right?"

He shook his head in disbelief, and went back to playing games on his phone; clearly there was a grand lesson that I was not getting, and Grant was not gonna save me any time soon.

Dress #2: Slimmer than the first, highlighted her figure, had glitter snowflakes running down the sides, made her look sexy as hell.

Her: Ok, is this better?

Me: Yeah, it really highlights your figure.

Her: Highlights my figure?

Me: Yeah, you know…makes you look...sexy?

Her: It's too tight isn't it? I look like a holiday hooker!

Me: No, no, no,! You look-

Her: I know what I look like! You don't have to rub it in, i'll find another one!

She stormed off to the dress rack, grabbed another dress, and stormed back into the changing room, swearing excessively. Grant busted out in laughter, grabbing my shoulder for support.

"What!?" I asked him. "What I say!?"

He just continued to laugh in my face, clearly not ready to end my suffering, that amused him so. Five minutes later, Allyson came out of the changing room, and stormed over to me.

Dress #3:Had a Mrs. Claus type look to it, slim yet frilly, with a white fur pelt around her shoulder area, looked kinda cliché, but she made it work.

Her: How about now? (so much venom)

Me: Great! Absolutely stunning, kinda like a hot Mrs. Claus.

Her: I look like a grandmother!?

Me: No, you look like the embodiment of the Christmas spirit!

Her: So I look like a walking novelty?

Me: Yes? Is that bad?

Her: Yes! When people see me, I want them to think i'm hot for this century! If anyone above the age of thirty calls me 'cute', i'm too PG. Ugh, let's try this again.

It just didn't stop, it was an unstoppable runaway train. Every dress was either too big, too tight, not the right color, not Christmasy enough, too Christmasy, too conservative, too revealing, it was just a nightmare; and Grant was just loving it.

"Dude," he said as Allyson was scanning the rack for another dress. "You suck at this, like so unbelievably hard."

"What's the deal though?" I asked him. "I mean she looks great in all of the dresses, why is this so hard for her, why can't she see how hot she is?"

"Because you sir, can't spit any type of game."

"What!?"

"Look bro, girls need to feel above and beyond all the others, it has to be them at the top, with nobody else even close to their level. Now, you're right, all of her dresses have been top notch, but your compliments are lagging. Calling her beautiful, sexy, great, that's not enough. There too generic, too anybody, it's gotta be more exclusive, tailored just for her. In fact, follow me, let me show you how it's done."

He got up and walked to Allyson, who was still in between dresses 11-30. I followed, trying to remain as invisible as possible.

"How's it going Allyson?" Grant asked her.

"Terrible," she said. "Everything's all wrong, it's not me, it doesn't fit."

"Well then what is you? Describe you to me."

"I'm hot, i'm fun, i'm sexy, stunning, beautiful, and gorgeous, but i'm still a sweet, southern, good, but not too good, girl who won't turn you away just because you may not be the most attractive thing on the planet. I just wanna feel beautiful and sexy, without striking fear into everyone, I don't wanna be unapproachable, just exquisite."

"Ok, then. How about…this one?"

Grant pretended like he was making an extremely complicated decision, but I knew he just picked the dress at random. Still, it wasn't a bad choice. It was blood red, with snowflakes made of rhinestones dancing across the length. It was tight around the torso, but evened out into a smooth, mediumly ruffled leg area, also decorated in multi colored rhinestones, that probably would've turned into miniature stars under the dance floor lights. In other words, this dress was perfect for showing off, perfect for dancing, and perfect for Allyson; all Grant had to do was sell it to her.

"That one?" Allyson asked him. "What about it?"

"What do you mean what about it!?" Grant exclaimed, kinda activating his own inner fashionista. "It's so unbelievably totally you! The blood red is an automatic win, because let's face it, you're gonna leave a trail of bleeding hearts in your wake. The snowflake patterns, the way they cascade from the head top to bottom, cleverly made of clear gems in the midst of a shower of multi colored ones, you're gonna be a walking Rihanna song tonight. The frame of the dress is slim, and hugs your torso just right, yet it covers your legs in a multi million dollar frame, perfect for dancing too. Also, let's face it, the dress and the accessories that come with it, are nothing compared to the one thing that'll make this dress above and beyond."

"And what's that?" Allyson asked him, her voice extremely wistful.

"You," I automatically burst out.

Allyson whipped around, her face an odd mix of shock and delight. Grant freaking pumped his fists in the air, mouthing the words "_YES, FINALLY!"_ Obviously, I did something right, but now it was my turn to sell it.

"You really mean that Jason?" she asked me.

"Of course," I said. "I don't know much about fashion, dresses, etiquette, to be honest, I probably wasn't gonna go to prom this year, but i'm tangeting. The point is, you are too beautiful for words to accurately describe. Your personality adds to it by several infinity, and that's what this dress has, that no other girl's does. Because of all the girls that are gonna be at this dance, none of them will ever come close to replicating your radiance. Even the sun can't hold a candle to you; believe me when I tell you, this dress is just an appetizer, the star of the show, you, is gonna be the one that brings it all the way home."

Allyson teared up a bit, and tackled me with a hug. If I wasn't as durable as I was, she would've snapped me in half, cuz that 2,000 pound strength was definitely working my spine. She grabbed the dress, a few other accessories, and made her way into the changing room. Grant clapped me on the shoulder, and guided me back to our sitting booth.

"Dude!" he said. "That was great, great, upselling, and just on time too, because I honestly didn't have anywhere else to take it."

We sat down again, and waited for another 10 minutes. This time when Allyson came out, I didn't even have to pretend to be stunned. Grant was right, the blood red made her skin pop. The dress was tightish in the torso, but not too tight. The rhinestone patterns were simply miniature stars orbiting around the big one (her). They made a slight twinkling rainbow pattern as she walked, and I had no doubt she'd end up blinding some people tonight. She was wearing fancy red long gloves that stopped just past her elbow, encrusted with diamonds all over them, plus a snowflake pattern on the back of the hands. Also (just because she had to), she was sporting a tiara, made of interlocking snowflakes, which was slightly overkill, but only slightly, I mean I wasn't gonna start calling her queen or anything like that already; that's how you get whipped. She smiled so wide, I thought her face was gonna fall off. Grant and I burst into applause to help her on her way towards us. No opinions were needed, no debates were had. Allyson had finally found her look, thank God.

"You look a zillion bucks Allyson," Grant said. "Way to go."

"Thanks," she said, blushing so unbelievably hard. "You guys really helped me find my look, thanks so much, let me put this thing on standby, then we'll get started with you two; Jason, you're first, Grant sit tight."

She walked over to an assistant, got her attention, and after grabbing her regular clothes, and after about five minutes in another room, Allyson came out holding a black dress bag. She hung it up next to Grant and I, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me along for a fashion trip. The good thing was that my outfit picking probably took about 20 minutes tops, compared to Allyson's whole hour. Granted, we already had 50% of my outfit figured out, we were looking for a black suit, a red shirt, and probably mixed colored vest and tie. All that was left was to figure out, was the details. It only took about three suggestions before we found the perfect fit. It was a black silk tux with a large snowflake etched into the right side of the jacket. It was subtle, only visible if the light caught it just right, but it looked cool, especially with the other snowflakes lightly scattered around the suit. We picked out a plain red dress shirt, a black tie with red snowflake patterns on it, and a black vest with red snowflake patterns cascading all over the thing. After that, all we had to do was pick out a nice pair of shoes, and I went in the changing booth. I got changed into my suit quickly, and marched out of the booth, putting on my best attempt at a prince charming. Based off of the way Allyson had her hands over her mouth, i'd say I was doing it pretty good.

"You look amazing!" she said.

"Just amazing?" I said, frowning (I was just messing with her).

"What?"

"I can't do this, I can't be just amazing, I need to be, I have to-"

"No, no, no! Jason, you look fantastic, perfect, a total…jerk, you're kidding aren't you!?"

I smiled and laughed, reveling in her confusion.

"What?" I asked her. "You were totally like that."

"Was not!"

"You totally were," Grant jumped in. "But that's not the point, can we get to me now, it's my turn to get all male modeled up, then at least we can hit the mall."

"Humph," Allyson said. "Whatever, and by the way Jason, can you pull your hair back for the dance? I think it'll make you stand out even more."

"Sure," I said, as I went to get changed into my regular clothes, and get checked out.

It only took about ten minutes to get everything situated, and I still almost passed out when I swept my debit card (courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D) to pay a 1,500 dollar bill. Afterwards, it only took about five more minutes for Grant and Allyson to wrap up with his dress gimmick. I won't lie, the guy came out pretty good looking. His suit was kinda like mine, just in reverse colors. White silk hugged his muscular body just right, etched with a giant Christmas tree on all of the right side, that spread around to the back. He wore a white vest etched with a single white snowflake pattern, a solid green shirt, a solid white tie, and a white fedora with a green strap around it. The guy even did a small Michael Jackson dance on the way out; oh yeah, he was gonna kill it at the dance.

"Not bad for a farm boy huh?" he asked me, giving me a fist bump.

"Not bad at all bro," I said. "You almost look like a challenge."

"Yeah, almost he says."

"Ok, ok," Allyson intervened. "You two can fight later, let's get out of here, these stores always bring out the worst in me, let's bail."

Grant and I suppressed the urge to say '_oh really?", _and he changed back into his clothes, and went around back to pay for his suit. Afterwards, we finally got out of that fashion death trap, and went back to the van.

"Find everything you needed?" Coulson asked us.

"Eventually," Grant said. "The lady had to go through the motions before she found the right dress."

"Everything takes time, especially if it's a job done right. Besides, a girl only gets one chance to make an entrance, am I right?"

"Thank you Agent Coulson!" Allyson said, throwing her biggest "_Hah!" _face at Grant and I.

"No problem Ms. Grace," he said. "I was young once too, and my prom date was just as meticulous about her dress choice. Alright, where to next kids?"

"Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn please," I said. "I've got my own fashion craving to sate."

This earned a few quizzical looks from Grant and Allyson, but Coulson, turned us invisible, took us sky high, and flew us to my directions. Ok, quick confession, I love leather jackets. Ever since I saw a cool Lakers one, with an all purple coating, the logo plastered on the back, and the multiple championships dotted around the back, I knew I wanted one and more. Mom, would always promise to get me one, but for one reason or another, kept putting it off; not today. Coulson dropped us off in front of a small store called Hip Hop Closet. This was the place to go if you wanted custom, one of a kind leather jackets, T-Shirts, etc. The store wasn't anything special on the outside, but inside, it was a beehive of shoppers, presses going off, and multicolored leather jackets getting tossed around like footballs; I loved this place. I made my way through the masses, making sure not to lose Grant and Allyson in the mix, because (no offense), but this was a pretty black store, and even though they could take care of themselves, I didn't want them getting hassled by the thugs that sometimes come here. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I made it to the counter, and was so happy when I saw Jimmy Johns at the front. He was a burly guy (like Mark Henry burly) with long black dreads that reached down to his mid back, tied back in a ponytail; fun fact, this guy was the whole reason I grew dreads. He was a friendly guy, always made nice with the customers, helped them out in whatever way he could, and most importantly, didn't overcharge. Seriously, at their base, each of the multi colored jackets in the store were only about 250 (he sold them by the lot), if you wanted more custom ones, you might pay 500, but never more than that, unless you ordered everything on your jacket. Because of this, Jimmy outsold a lot of designer stores in the area, the only reason he didn't go pro was because of tax reasons, and the threat of local gangs that might wanna shake him down (although he had a few shotguns that would say otherwise). Long story short, good guy, close friend, sold cheap, sold quality.

"Yo!" he said as I made it to the front. "Is that my boy Jason, stinking up my shop!"

"You're one to talk Jimmy!" I retorted. "At this point, I bet you got mice living in your hair!"

He dapped me up. Yeah, Jimmy and I usually get into a one-shot name calling contest, it was just our thing.

"Good to see you man," he said. "Where you been at?"

"Depends, what you hear?"

"Word around the streets is that you're some kinda super freak, put some kid in the hospital."

My face must've gave it away, but like I said, Jimmy was cool, if you had something you wanted to keep under wraps, he wasn't gonna be the one to spill.

"Hey man," he said. "No sweat, never liked that rich boy anyway, he needed to get his ass busted."

"Jimmy?"

"Don't worry Jason, I know you, I know you wouldn't do him like that if you knew what you were doing. Listen, you obviously came here on business, and we'll get down to it in a sec, I just want you to know, you should probably stay low for a good while, your mom is all good, but you? I'd stay out of sight for a while, probably relocate until the heat cools down."

"That bad huh?"

"Yeah, sorry little man. But hey, you've been one of my favorite little hoodlums running around here, even helped me out a bit when I was short staffed. Tell you what, I give you one free choice, any jacket you want, on the house."

"For real?"

"You know it, just make sure you tell folks where you got it from, you know, as you run away from em'."

We laughed for a bit, and then moved on to business. Allyson didn't want anything here (apparently leather jackets weren't her thing), but Grant was eying an Oakland Raiders one, plus a few superhero ones (totally fanboy). I went ahead and used my freebie to get the Lakers jacket I so desperately wanted for so long, saving myself a good 400 bucks; afterwards, things took another sharp turn for the worse, concerning my wallet. I looked through the many different variations of the Philadelphia Eagles jackets he had, and finally picked one with an all black back, green running down the outer arms, with a white square under the elbows. The Eagles logo was plastered on the back and arms, with the word 'Eagles' stretching across the chest. The jacket only cost me 450, but that was one of the cheap ones. Like I said, you can make your jackets ridiculous, and I decided to get creative with my Mighty Ducks one. I went over to the customizing booths, where you could basically make your own jacket, and have it printed out for you in an hour. Because I didn't wanna leave her on her own, plus to give me an excuse to stay near her, I invited Allyson to help me (she didn't do much except compliment my choices). So how did my jacket look? Remember the jersey that the Mighty Ducks were rocking at the final game of D2 and D3? Well, I took that design, and literally dragged it on the tight jacket (I always prefered tighter jackets rather than lose and bulky), color for color, logo for logo. I put the number 96 (favorite number) on the arms and back, gave myself a captain's C, and put my last name across the back. To print this out would be 650, but it would totally be worth it. Finally, because i'm an uber Power Rangers nerd (laugh at me, and i'll take you for a spin in an F3 tornado), I decided to get creative with that. My favorite season was Wild Force, I loved the costumes, characters, everything, so I decided to use those designs for my jacket. I definitely couldn't afford to do them all at once, so I picked the red, blue, and black rangers for my designs. I picked out three base color jackets, put the custom sashes across the respective jackets, including their custom symbols on the left chest. Also, I put the custom jacket images on the back (the ones they had on their civilian jackets), with matching words and phrases. These jackets were 400 dollars each, and by the time I was finished with this store, I only had 550 dollars on my card, but again totally worth it when I got my awesome new gear an hour later (nobody ever used the customizers, so I got all three of the printers to myself). Grant also got to have some fun too. He bought his Oakland Raiders jacket, two Spider-Man jackets (one in color, one in black), and a red, silver and gold Iron Man jacket that was so loud, I could practically hear Stark echoing from the fabric. Still, he had a little more than 500 bucks more than I did, so I couldn't say he wasn't financially responsible. We were going to leave just then, but then Allyson did that thing where she remembers to think of others.

"Guys!" she said. "We gotta get Coulson something!"

"Huh?" Grant and I asked. "Why?"

"Because he's driving us around all day, not complaining about sitting in a car for hours at a time while we play tourist, and we need to get him something to show that we appreciate him for all he's doing for us."

"Damn," said Jimmy. "That's a pretty good argument, you got any rebuttal boys?"

Grant and I were shot down, Allyson could really pull on those heartstrings, plus the guilt tripping was so real.

"Ok," said Grant. "We know when we're beat. So, how about a Captain America jacket?"

"Why Captain America?" Allyson asked.

"Word around S.H...arron's place, is that Coulson is a fanboy of Cap, bet if we give him one of those, it'd make his day."

We all agreed on it, found a good looking one worth 150, and spit the bill three ways; we even had time to gift wrap it.

"Alright Jason," Jimmy dapped me up one more time. "You stay safe, and be good, same goes for y'all white kids too, alright?"

"Thanks for everything Jimmy, i'll order the rest of the set when my wallet can take the hits ok?"

Thank God, Grant and Allyson weren't all that big on political correctness, and we were able to leave the store, and get to the car without causing a fuss.

"All done with that fashion hunger of yours Jason?" Coulson asked me, actually smirking at me.

"All done," I said, not even a little ashamed.

"We got you something Agent Coulson," Allyson said all sweet, as she gave him the gift wrapped jacket.

"Really?" Coulson asked, kinda confused as to why we'd get him something. "What is it?"

"Open it and see,"

Coulson tore open the wrappings, and for a moment, light up like a school boy. Grant was right, the guy was a total Captain America fanboy, it shone through for a moment, before he quickly recomposed himself.

"Thank you all," he said in his monotone voice, but he wasn't fooling us, even through the shades, I could see the light in his eyes. "So, where to next?"

"Any good malls around here?" Grant asked. "Oh, and while we're at it, after we hit the mall up, let's get something to eat, i'm wasting away here."

"I second that motion," Coulson said.

"Ok," I said thinking for a bit. "Well, Manhattan Mall is pretty good, and after that, we can go for some pizza or something, I know a place, sound good?"

Everyone, agreed, and we set off towards the mall. Because we were in a small driving area, plus there was no place to hide and take off, we made our way to the mall the old-fashioned way, driving. It took about an hour (NYC traffic is brutal), another 10 minutes to actually find a parking space, but we made it to the mall alright.

"Why is it that when I want to do something, we have to be all slow about it?" Grant asked as we walked through the doors.

"Stop whining," I said. "We're here aren't we, plus we are so far ahead of schedule, we needed to burn some time anyway."

"Whateves. Alright this way you guys, GameStop, and Champs are calling my name."

"You guys go on ahead," Allyson said, looking intently at the directory. "I've got other places to shop at, preferably without boys, i'll meet up with you here in about an hour, no you can't come with me. Bye."

She took off in a power walk, leaving Grant and I in the dust.

"Uhhhh," I said looking to Grant for some type of explanation. He shrugged.

"Either face care products, clothes, tampons, or Victoria's Secret, don't question it, girls are weird like that, now come on let's get a move on."

Grant and I went to the stores he wanted to. In GameStop, he bought a handful of new action, fighting, sports, and Call of Duty Games, but I didn't buy anything. For one, I was almost broke. Besides, I either owned most of the games, or mom was gonna get me them for Christmas, so there was no need to spend anymore money; although I did pick something out for her in Spencer's as we made our way to get Grant some new shoes. I'll give it to him, Grant loved him some shoes. He tried on five different pairs of Jordans, each worth no less than 150, and bought every one of them; hell, if we'd have stayed any later, we'd be late to meet up with Allyson again. She came back carrying a pink bag, and two bottles of cologne, which she gave to me and Grant.

"What?" she asked us. "We gotta smell as good as we look."

"Yeah I know that," said Grant. "But Rue21 cologne? Seriously?"

"Shut up Grant, you'll thank me later. Now if we're all done here, shall we leave?"

We walked back to the van, and I was so glad that the shopping was over with. When it came to dresses, Allyson was a nightmare. With leather jackets, you might as well stick a harpoon in my wallet and bleed it dry; and the mall is just whatever, I don't care about them either way.

"Well," said Agent Coulson. "By the looks on your faces, i'd say we're all ready to eat, are we not?"

"So much," said Grant. "Where to Jason?"

I searched for the address for Best Pizza on my iPod.

"33 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn," I finally said. "You guys will love it."

This time, we actually did get to fly, and made it to the restaurant in less than five minutes.

"Best Pizza?" Grant asked as we got out of the van. "Kinda pretentious don't you think?"

"Trust me," I responded. "It lives up to the name, mom and I eat here together all the time."

"Your heart's bleeding all over my shoes bro."

Everyone laughed (even Coulson).

"Whatever," I recovered. "Now you wanna eat or what?"

We made our way inside, took a seat in the window booth (the manager never cared where people sat), and made small talk until Tony (the manager) came by to take our order.

"Well, well, well," the smiling old man said. "If it isn't little Jason, how are ya son?"

"How many times I gotta tell you Mr. Tony?" I joked with him. "I haven't been little since I was eleven, i'm a man now."

"Well you'll always be little to me, no matter how tall you get. So who are your friends?"

"Oh, Tony, meet Allyson, Grant, and-"

"Phillip," Coulson interrupted me. "I'm Philip, their driver for the day."

"Driver?" Tony whistled. "You get adopted by some rich folk Jason? The only driver I remember you having, was old Doris. Speaking of which how is she?"

"She's fine," I said. "Probably out Christmas shopping or something, you know how she always has to get things done a week in advance."

"Always was one step ahead of the ballgame she was. But enough small talk, what can I get for you all this fine day?"

After a bit of collaboration, we all agreed on getting three 2 liters of Sprite, Pepsi, and Sunkist for our drinks.

"Ok," said Tony, and for your meal?"

"Lemme get one large meat lovers, a large supreme, and a large pepperoni pan pizza."

"Alright, and will the bill be split three ways or-"

"I've got it covered," said Coulson.

"Ok then," said Tony. "Pizza should be out in 30 or less, i'll go get your drinks."

After Tony left, the table kinda filled with an awkward silence; naturally, Grant was the one to break it.

"So," he said to Coulson. "How's it like, you know, working with The Avengers?"

Coulson's face morphed into a small smirk.

"Well Mr. Jackson," he started. "Mostly, I work with a covert team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but occasionally I work with Hawkeye and Black Widow."

"Really!?" Allyson spoke up. "What's she like?"

"She's…dedicated, funny, charming, basically whatever you want her to be."

"And Hawkeye?"

"He's polite enough, but he prefers to work from a distance."

"But the other Avengers," Grant persisted. "Come on dude, I know you've met the big four at least once."

Coulson sighed, clearly he was not getting out of this one any time soon.

"Yes Mr. Jackson, I have met Thor, Stark, Captain America and Hulk on multiple occasions. Long story short, Thor is brash, but good hearted, Captain Rogers is the most stand up guy you'll ever meet, Stark is….a piece of work, and Hulk is many things."

"You ever help them on missions?" Grant asked him.

"Well, there was this one time with a-"

Coulson went into detail about his exploits with The Avengers, and even I couldn't pretend like I wasn't impressed. Still, it was a lot to take in, what with all the Hydra bases, alien invasions, robots, and city brawls. As Coulson was telling the stories, I got a new perspective on the heroes. Beforehand, I assumed they were just to lazy or didn't care enough to worry about us small timers, but from what I was hearing, they did the best they could 100% of the time; they simply couldn't be everywhere at once. It made me feel a little better/worse about yesterday, sure I was basically a hero now, sure I was saving the world, but at what cost? What good was saving the world, if you failed the people who lived in it? I was probably gonna sit in thought forever, but then Tony came back with the pizzas, and I snapped back to the living.

"Dude!" Grant said. "The slices are bigger than my face!"

"Welcome to New York my friend," I said.

"Welcome indeed, alright let's dig in!"

"Not before we bless the food!" Allyson said as she slapped his hand away from the pan pizza.

She blessed the food quickly, we all said 'Amen", and THEN we dived into the pizza.

For thirty minutes we ate and drank to our heart's content, Coulson still telling us tales of The Avengers' greatest battles (he was really getting into it). He didn't have that many to tell, just average stuff about battles against Red Skull, Loki, Dr. Doom, etc., nothing we haven't all heard about before. So once he ran out of Avengers stories to tell, he went back to fanboying out over Captain America, telling us about his WWII days. I loved history, it was my best subject, so I actually helped him out with his missing points, helped him expound on them even further, and generally show off my geniusness to Grant and Allyson. Everything was fine, until I actually got a listen to the news.

"And emergency teams are still working hard to clean up the damage at Scott City, and Garden City, Kansas, where a battle between famous heroes, young metahumans, an army of zombie-like creatures, and some type of green monster, not the Hulk, caused a crevice of damage to the cities' apartment districts, a local community college, and the agricultural district. Casualties were light, but damage to both cities are heavy, leaving hundreds without homes, and for 8 year olds Chloe and Mordecai Brooks, who lost their parents and younger brother, we'll-"

I stopped paying attention after that, I couldn't bear to hear anymore. Allyson gripped my hand.

"It's ok, Jason," she whispered to me. "It wasn't your fault, you did your best, remember what Fury said."

I nodded, gripping her hand for support, I was not gonna break down, not here.

"Yeah bro," Grant continued. "Remember, you saved the world. Nobody can take that away from you, nobody. Besides, it's not just you, this one's on all of us, we're a team, that means we take the wins, AND the losses together. And believe me bro, we ARE going to win, that's just the end all be all; the good guys always win."

"Listen to them Jason," Coulson said. "Take it from someone who's been there, no good comes from taking all the weight of the team on your shoulders. You're a good kid, you all are, and even though it wasn't fair of us to drag you into this, you've displayed remarkable skill, teamwork, and adaptiveness. Use that, because you may be strong as individuals, but together, you're going to be a force to be reckoned with. If this is the start of a new team, a new addition to the generation of heroes, i'm proud to say I was there at the beginning."

Grant, Allyson, and I nodded our heads, but I still wasn't entirely convinced.

"But do you really think i'm cut out for the whole hero thing?" I asked him. "Up until yesterday, the only thing heroes were to me, were the cause of my parents death. I held that anger in for so long, up until I did the same thing to those kids, that they did to me. Now, I don't know what to think. My anger is gone, my perception's been dismantled, I just don't know what to think about them, or myself anymore."

"Sounds like you need a new perspective on what it means to be a hero, Jason," said Coulson. "And it seems to me, it's nothing that can be taught or told to you, it's something you need to experience for yourself, luckily, you won't have to do it alone."

I smiled. If I was on the path to being a hero (which was debatable), at least I had my friends to keep me company for the ride.

"Speaking of which," said Grant. "We need to work on making our team a bit more official."

"Like how?" I asked him.

"Well, we already got the team plays down, we almost got the names down, we're still working on the overall team name, but what about our gear? We should totally name those."

"Why?"

"Thor's hammer has a name, it was always common for ancient warriors to name their weapons, why not us? I mean, I would start first, but i'm still working on my hero name, you two however, you should totally get on that."

"Dude, that is so not even-"

"Sun Knives, Solar Sabers, and Solar Spear!" Allyson blurted out. "How was that?"

Grant gave her a fist bump, and they both looked at me expectantly. I sighed, and face palmed them; sometimes I couldn't tell who was leading this team.

"Storm Sword…Thunder Spear…Sky Shield, happy now?"

Grant and Allyson clapped for me like it was my birthday; idiots. Again, everything seemed like it was going fine, then the TV burst into static for a few seconds, before flashing back on with something that was definitely not the news. Some guy, dressed in a uniform that looked like a mix between the U.S. Army and dark green snakeskin, that looked strong enough to deflect bullets, was on screen. The image was definitely hacked, I mean it was obvious he had someone filming him, plus he was surrounded by hundreds (probably more) of his 'snake army', for lack of better term. They were in some kind of lobby, couldn't tell where, but the place looked familiar, as in like i've been there familiar. The scary thing, there were people, innocent civilians, being taken hostage, tied and gagged, and then thrown to the floor like sacks of potatoes. Whoever these guys were, they meant business, which meant the people in the building were in some serious $#!+.

"Good morning good citizens of New York City," The snake man said in a thick Hispanic accent. "As you can see, i'm in the middle of a big withdrawal here from the lovely local Bank of America, however, my men and I seem to have hit a minor snag. The safe, doesn't seem to wanna open for us, despite our best efforts with hacking, drilling, even highly concentrated acid, what is you make your safes out of these days, Adamantium? Not the point. The point is, there are several hundred million dollars in that safe with The Serpent Society's name on it, and we'd like in, as in right now. You have thirty minutes, get whoever you need to on the horn, the CEO, the President, whoever, just get us the code to unlock this safe within thirty minutes, or i'll put a bullet in the heads of all the civilians here fore every minute that we don't get the code. The guards are already dead, don't know how many more, this is a very big tower, just get us the code, or little miss Katy Perry here will be the first to go. I don't wanna see no cops within 100ft of this place, and no f*(#!% heroes. Also, just for a bit more incentive, i'd hurry up with that code, because once we run out of people to shoot, we'll bring this damn building down with a bang, don't worry, we have our ways out."

He pulled his fist up, and I accidentally made the TV overcharge and explode, but i'll never forget who that was. That pink hair, the light caramel skin, that look of terror and pleading in her eyes. Now I know why that place looked familiar, that was the bank mom and I went to, and that guy had my mom's hair in his fist; he was gonna kill my mom!

"Jason," Allyson whispered to me. "What's wrong, what's happening."

"My mom!" I barely got the words out. "He has my mom, they're going to kill her!"

Apparently my whisper was loud enough for Grant and Coulson to hear, because they leaned in closer.

"Dude!" Grant hissed. "Are you serious? They got your mother?"

"Yes!" I hissed back at him. "Coulson, we have to help, my mom, the people, we're fast, we can be in before they know it, we can-"

"Go," Coulson said. "We don't have the manpower necessary to counteract them, and the signal won't have been enough to broadcast anywhere outside of the state, you're their only chance. Don't go for the obvious way in, don't be too careless, but don't be too careful either, and above all, do not kill them. This is your first official outing to the world, make sure it's a good one. Now as you would say Grant, is it not morphing time?"

We exited the restaurant, made our way into a nearby alley, and made sure nobody could see us as we shed our heavy winter jackets (didn't want them to compact on us while we were in our suits) .

"Ready guys?" I asked them.

"Ready." they said.

We pressed the red button on our communicators.

"It's Morphin Time!" we all shouted (not too loud).

"Super-G!"

"Sunbird!"

"Storm-Lord (I changed it)!"

Our battle suits flashed on our bodies, and after a quick half a second to plan our strategy, I shifted into Storm Form, and the three of us took off as fast as we could into the air. The idea was to fly extremely high, so high and fast, that we could make a rooftop landing without the Serpent Society knowing that we were there. Yeah, you could make the argument that we could've run there, but streaks of blue and yellow are really hard to miss, especially considering the fact that this was gonna be an assault from the roof down no matter which way you spun it. I led Grant and Allyson right over the Bank of America skyscraper (although I was still pretty slow in the air compared to them), then I used my enhanced vision to scope out the scene. Keep in mind, we were up in the stratosphere, which is roughly 31 miles above the earth, my enhanced vision was so on point (after I made it focus to an extreme degree), that even from 31 miles away, I could see twenty armed Serpent Soldiers (official name) with extreme detail, guarding the perimeter of the roof. They were equipped with sniper rifles, machine guns, even a few Gatling guns, none of which were any real threat to us. Still, this had to be done quickly and quietly, if they even got half a chance to radio to their buddies, my mom, and everyone in that building who wasn't robbing it, was dead.

"Alright guys," I said to Grant and Allyson (in Storm Form, I sounded like something out of Darksiders). " There are twenty guards on top, all armed with guns, the snow around us cover our attack, but we have to make it fast and quiet. You two go ahead, you're a lot faster than me at flying. Super-G, start with the ones on the right, Sunbird, on your left, after that, take out all the remaining ones as fast as you can. Do not let them get a chance to call in for backup."

"Understood Storm-Lord," said Grant. "By the way, love the whole demon voice, makes you sound like a bad ass."

"Super-G," Allyson warned him.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm totally serious, just trying to lighten the mood a little bit."

Everything in me wanted to snap at him for trying to find some humor in something as serious as a rescue mission, but I couldn't blame him, comic relief was kinda his thing; the team needed a bit of that every now and then. Still, Grant sombered up, and after a second to prepare, I unleashed the hounds. In overall time, the first part of operation rescue didn't take very long. Grant and Allyson zoomed to the top of the building in less than a second, and commenced to systematically wipe the soldiers off the board. Grant knocked half of them senseless with halfhearted swings (we all agreed that thugs for hire were not high enough for the sword list), and Allyson plowed through the other half with a combination of punches and kicks. I flew down after them, shifted back to normal, and helped them round up the bad guys with instant handcuffs, courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. This was where things got tricky. I could sense all of the electricity coursing through the building, and while it was giving me a rough map of the area, it wasn't clear enough, I needed a clear schematic of where everyone was, and how we could incorporate our strategy to fit the need. I was starting to get frustrated, but then I noticed a fuse box on one of the walls of the roof, and got a crazy idea.

"_Hang tight you guys," _I thought to them. "_I got an idea."_

I walked over to the fuse box, cut through the lock with my sword, and grabbed a handful of the circuitry. I didn't know what I was going for exactly, but everything fell into place. Suddenly, in an intense rush, it was like I was one with the power grid of the skyscraper, anything that used electricity to function, anything that was within 100ft of anything electrical, I could sense it with extreme accuracy. Still, what I sensed was disheartening as f*(#. There were fifty floors in the bank, and every last one of them were filled with a good handful of hostages, surrounded by 20 thugs on each floor, not counting the lobby, which had over 30. The real problem? Something wasn't natural about this. Even on TV, I struggled to comprehend how a heist could be so pre planned and effective, that a large group of militia could take it with so few casualties, or signs of damage to the building. With my Thunder Sense, I could feel foreign energy in the air, like a wave of fire had just burst on every floor of the building. Even more, all of the soldiers had traces of this 'fire' on them, like they were in the middle of it; that's when it hit me. This was something that literally happened in the blink of an eye. It was like all of these soldiers materialized out of thin air, and systematically put this place on lock. Given the fact that I had a dream about Doom setting up a challenge for us, not to mention the fact that this seemed to have a bit of magic in the background, I resigned to the fact that this wasn't your average bank heist (you wouldn't believe how common they are in New York), and that this was probably just the tip of the spear that Doom had planned for me and my friends. Snatching all of the soldiers wouldn't be too much of a threat, except for the fact that I could feel all the way down to the security guard room, where ten guys were keeping constant eyes on every floor of the building. They were on the second floor, and while they didn't hold much of a threat, they had to be the first people that were dealt with, otherwise all the citizens in the bank were gonna get a bullet in the head for Christmas. Still, even in this almost unsolvable situation, I could kinda feel myself dissolving, becoming pure electricity, becoming one with the power grid, which meant that….

"_Alright guys," _I thought to Grant and Allyson, cancelling the transformation. "_We're dealing with fifty floors of armed soldiers, there are a lot of hostages, so once we strike, we can't stop until every floor is clear, if they even get a single seconds to realize what's going on, it's all over. Also, this wasn't just some average hostile takeover, these guys didn't just dress up as janitors and wait for the right moment to strike, they were flashed in, as in probably magical teleportation flashed in, which brings me to something I really should've told you this morning."_

I quickly told them about my dream, the Shadow Gods, Doom being on their payroll, their hand in the messing with the stones, and how they were distracting the Olympians from helping clear the situation (I also let it slip that I was the X50 great grandson of Zeus).

"_Jason!" _Allyson mentally screamed at me.

"_Storm-Lord," _I corrected her.

"_Screw you! Why didn't you tell us about this? We could've prepared for this!"_

"_I doubt that, but yeah i'm sorry, it's not that we were having so much fun, plus I was praying that the dream wasn't real. I just didn't wanna scare you guys."_

"_Why would we be scared?" _Grant asked me. "_We got a son of Zeus on our side, we are so golden!"_

"_It's just up until now, we haven't been on Doom's radar, now we have his full attention."_

"_Then let's give him something to pay attention to bro! But can we do it after we finish this time sensitive rescue mission right now?"_

"_Deal," _I said, "_I'm gonna go directly to the surveillance room and take out their eyes, when I give the signal, you two take out the floors in descending order, i'll work from the second floor up, you guys should reach me before I even get to floor ten."_

"How you gonna do that?" Grant asked me. "Plus, how are we supposed to get in?"

"I have my ways, and just phase through the roof."

"We can't do that yet."

"Then use the windows, and learn how to later."

I walked back to the fuse box, grabbed the wiring, and let myself dissolve into a massive surge of electricity. To be honest, it felt amazing, like having an ultimate sugar rush, but it was one of those abilities where I had to sacrifice my sight, and rely purely on the electricity in the building to act as a map. In half a second, I was already down to the second floor, literally inside the surveillance computer screens. I gave it three seconds, and then gave the signal.

"_GUYS, GO NOW!" _I mentally roared into their heads, as I rushed out of the computers in the form of ten high voltage, but non-lethal, bolts of lightning. I knocked them out and restrained them before they knew what was happening, and started my journey upwards.

The second part of the operation couldn't have gone any smoother even if we'd have tired. For ten floors, I ran at Mach 5, punching and restraining bad guys (making sure to dial back the punches), or blasting and restraining bad guys. It was always amusing to see the absolute cluelessness on their faces as I decked them cold, the sheer bliss of ignorance that shielded them from the fact that they had gotten their asses kicked faster than they could blink. In what almost added up to a single second, all fifty floors were secure, although we left the people tied and gagged for now; it was for their own protection, we'd be back for them.

"_To the second floor," _ I thought to Grant and Allyson, and we raced down to the security room.

"_Damn Storm-Lord," _Grant thought to me as he surveyed the damage. "_What you do_?"

"_They're not dead, if that's what you mean," _I must've put more venom in that than I wanted to, cuz Allyson gave me a 'are you cool?' look.

"_I'm fine Sunbird," _I thought to her. "_Let's just get this over with now, I don't wanna let my anger get the best of me."_

She nodded, and the three of us surveyed the lobby area, which was undoubtedly the trickiest part of the rescue. The area was the size of a cafeteria, about 40 or so soldiers had machine guns pointed at dozens of civilians, the only real problem was that the soldiers were more clustered together, meaning instead of 40 soldiers spread out across the room, it was more like 10 in one area, 10 in another, 5 in another, and the rest spread out in such a way, that maneuvering between them was going to be way too hard to attempt. The natural solution would be to just barrel through them all, but there would be no guarantee that the civilians wouldn't get hurt, especially if we went at it with more than 10% with our powers. Again, it seemed like I was in an unwinnable situation, but then my brain just poofed me the answer.

"Alright," I said to Grant and Allyson. "Here's what were gonna do. I'll rush in and create storm clouds over the two heavy groups, a few low level lightning strikes to the head should take the fight out of them. Sunbird, you focus on that group of five, take them out fast, and then move on to all the other scattered soldiers. Super-G, I know this is gonna be really selfish of me but-"

"Don't even sweat it Storm-Lord," he cut me off. "I'll make sure to uppercut that guy through a wall, he deserves it for messing with your mom."

"Thanks bro," I said, giving him a fist bump. "Ok team, let's do it."

Again, it was an almost flawless rescue. I rushed in, created two mini storm clouds over the big groups, and before they could even look up, they got pelted in the face with 2,000 volts from above. If the thunder was supposed to give us away, we were faster than it. Allyson created five sun blasts out of thin air, kinda like my Phantom Bolts, blowing five guys away, and then ran around punching the rest of the soldiers accompanying the lobby. Grant kept true to his word, and went immediately after the ring leader. Honestly, it may have well as been his own mother at risk, because he roared like a bear as he decked the guy so hard in the face, his helmet shattered, and he flew into a wall, cracking the plaster. We rounded up all the bad guys, freed all the civilians in the entire building, and met back at the lobby.

"Is everyone ok!?" I asked the civilians.

They gave me a general consensus of being ok. I walked over to my mom, who was still shaking from the experience, and knelt down next to he

"You alright ma'am?" I asked her.

She nodded her head.

"Thank you for saving us Mr…."

"Storm-Lord, and I hope this experience hasn't deterred you from this bank, it's still one of the best in New York, plus bigger banks are always much more trustworthy."

She smiled, and I gripped her shoulder lightly.

"Storm-Lord!" Super-G called over to me. "Look over here!"

I turned around, just as a flash of green light burst in the middle of a room, which spread into an extremely HD projection of a real time event. There were 17 people on screen. A tall muscular Beth Phoenix like woman, with long blonde hair, wearing a mix of skin tight snake patterns, and pieces of armor. Another Egyptian looking girl, wearing a white dress with snakes wrapping around the fabric (how was she not freezing?). There was another girl, wearing black snake army fatigues, with long black hair, with a green streak. Yet another girl, wearing a skin tight black suit that covered her face, but also had long green hair. There was some guy who looked like a mix between Mark Henry size, but with Rey Mysterio skin. He was wearing a green jumpsuit, which had a bunch of NASCAR LIKE patches all over it, plus a Rey Mysterio-like mask. There was black guy, with a shaved head, wearing, a snake suit. Literally, the guy was in a green and yellow snake suit with a tail where his legs should've been, with long snake fangs extending from his arms; he was kinda intimidating to look at. Back to the girls, there was another wearing a long yellow shirt, with yellow snake pants, holding electric whips. There was some guy, wearing a mix between a medieval knight chainmail suit, and orange snake scales, whose skin was orange, and he was wearing some type of snake head wear, he also had a cape. There was another black guy in a purple and yellow snake suit (he had legs), with the serpent's mouth acting like a helmet. There was a green Reptile (Mortal Kombat) looking guy, wearing a purple battle suit, with some wicked sharp talons. another white girl wearing a brown and yellow snake battlesuit, with snake fangs extending from her arms. There was a big green guy, wearing green snake armor, and a King Cobra headpiece. Another girl with red hair, wearing green snake scale tights, and accompanied by a giant python, as in Voldemort's pet level. There was another black guy wearing an outfit almost identical to the guy with the purple snake suit, except the suit was dark green, light green, and blue; plus, this guy was twice as bulky. There was another guy wearing an orange snake suit, with a robotic tail extending down his back (he still had legs); he was also wielding some kind of weird looking rifle. There was….I wanna say another guy, but he looked like an orange man snake, with a puffy lizard collar, wearing red breastplate armor, and god awful long purple boots and gloves, the guy should've been spending 25 to life for his outfit alone. Finally (I apologize for the fashion show), there was a quite literal 7 foot tall giant green man snake, with huge talons, thick arms and legs, and some killer fangs. Basically, these 17 snake clad fashionistas, were the big leaguers of the Serpent Society, and if that wasn't bad enough, they were standing in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. None of the cars were moving, all of the traffic seemed to just stop, and it was definitely these guys' faults. Especially considering the fact that they were all glowing with a devastatingly familiar orange aura, that made them look like a group of Super Saiyan bad asses. The blonde muscular chick stepped forward, and started speaking in a harsh, brutish voice.

"Hello children!" she said in a voice so loud, it was definitely being enhanced, cuz i'm pretty sure everyone within a mile of the bridge could hear it. "I do hope you've enjoyed our little game, it's nice to give the next generation of do gooders a little bit of experience in the field, you're welcome. But, the jig is up kiddies, you see, Dr. Doom has this big plan, and lately you've been annoying him, causing him to have migraines, and headaches and such; not good for the big man's health. So, he sent us to…intervene, if you will, and that's what we're doing."

She grabbed two SUVs by the tailgates, and lifted them above her head like they were pillows.

"WE'RE INTERVENING!"

I could hear the families in the cars, their screams almost deafening to me, as well as the roar in my ears, the rage I felt at those snake freaks for putting innocents at risk for something that was completely between us and Doom.

"Here's the deal, mini masks!" she continued. "Come to the Brooklyn Bridge with the stones, give yourselves up without a fight, and maybe, just maybe, Doom will go easy on you! Oh, and to give you a bit more incentive to cooperate, for every minute you don't show, two vehicles take a dip, starting now!"

She threw both SUVs to either side of her, and they careened about 100 meters out and down; the team and I called for a Team Meeting (official for when we speed up to strategize), and pulled S.E.R.A. up.

"How may I be of assistance, Master Storm-Lord? she asked (cool how she used my code name while I was on duty).

"Scan the transmission," I frantically told her. "Cross reference images with everything related to the Serpent Society."

Her face went slack for a moment, and then she refocused.

"Scan complete," she said. "Files uploaded and stored, would you like me to review them in alphabetical order, or by personal preference?"

"Just flash some holographic profiles please," I asked her. "And can you limit information down to names and powers please?"

"As you command Master Jason, one moment."

Her face disappeared, and half a sec later, a lot of holograms appeared in mid-air; Grant, Allyson, and I started studying.

The blonde chick who threw the cars, was named Anaconda (because they all had to have snake related names), her deal was super strength, Elasticity (Mr. Fantastic's power), and apparently, water breathing.

The Egyptian looking girl with the white snake dress was Asp. She could shoot bolts of Venom out of her hands.

The girl with the green streak in her hair was Black Mamba. She could use the Darkforce (whatever the hell that was), plus breathe underwater (were they snake-like or merpeople?).

The girl in the all black and green hair was Black Racer. She had was super speed, but she could only reach speeds of 700 MPH, not even fast enough to be on Quicksilver's radar.

The giant luchador in the NASCAR suit was named Bruiser. His powers were super strength and gravity manipulation. Apparently, he could make his fist hit as hard as a wrecking ball, or make himself unmovable; he was definitely on the top of the list.

The black guy in the cyber snake suit was Bushmaster (lame!). Aside from his cyber snake suit, plus his snake fang sabers, he was pretty much an average joe.

The blonde chick in the yellow shirt and snake pants was Coachwhip (lamer!). All she had going for her, were electric whips; that's it.

The orange medieval snake knight was Copperhead. He had gloves that could shoot energy blasts, but that was it for him.

The black guy in the purple snake suit was Cottonmouth. He could spit acid from his mouth, and could also unhinge his jaw, apparently to bite his victim's heads off.

The discount Reptile was Death Addler. He had super strength, enhanced agility, and poison claws and fangs.

The lady in the yellow and brown snake suit was Fer-De-Lance (so f*(#! % dumbass!). She had super strength, endurance, and snake fang sabers.

The guy in the King Cobra suit was (you guessed it) King Cobra. He had super strength, super speed, and energy projection abilities; damn, he kinda earned his name.

The red head with the giant pet snake was Princess Python. Aside from the python, she had no other special abilities, except the ability to control it.

The black guy in the green, and yellow snake suit was Puff Adder. His powers were acid spit, and the ability to increase his size.

The guy in the brown snake suit, with the cybernetic tail extending down his back, was Rattler. His ability was to create vibrations with his tail.

The orange snake man with a bad fashion sense was called Sidewinder. He couldn't do anything, the guy literally had no powers or gadgets.

Finally, the green man snake was called Slither. He was a mutant with super strength, Elasticity.

Now, even with the numbers and powers, these guys wouldn't be much of a threat, I mean we fought thousands at a time since this team started. But the thing was, these guys were juiced up on energy from the stone of Hercules; the aura gave it away, plus Anaconda literally threw those SUVs like they were water balloons. So whatever these guys had, god-like strength and durability was added to the list, even more so to the ones who already had super strength and durability in their bag of tricks. This was bad on the grounds that not only were we outnumbered and kinda outgunned, but also that Doom had at least one stone in his possession already; even scarier, he knew how to use it. The team and I went back and forth, analyzing our powers, comparing it to theirs, and creating fight plans. Ultimately, we boiled down to the fact that our greatest assets were our speed, energy projection, and strength. We were all crazy fast, Allyson and I were pretty good at using our energy powers, and we all had some form of enhanced strength, or at least the ability to make our punches go from zero, to BOOM BAM! in a heartbeat. So we incorporated that into our plans.

"Ok," I said after what seemed like 10 minutes of strategizing. "Let's go over this one more time. First thing we do is rescue and remove. You two grab those vans, and move them to safety, i'll become a massive cloud, and move all the other cars on the bridge to safety. We regroup as fast as we can, and Sunbird releases a massive blast wave that'll knock the Serpent Society off guard, and melt all of the snow and ice off the bridge, cuz ice and running don't mix. By the way, you sure you can do that without, you know, melting the bridge?"

"Yes Storm-Lord," she said getting an attitude. "Snow melts when it gets hot, but metal will hold up a lot better. Besides, i'm actually focusing the blast wave on the road, not a big one that'll engulf the entire bridge. Wait a minute, is that what you thought I meant?"

"No...maybe...yeah, so, not the point. After the people and the snow have been cleared, we move in fast and hard. I'll take out, or at least occupy the weaker ones, them being Asp, Black Racer, Bushmaster, Death Addler, Fer-De-Lance, Princess Python, and Rattler. Sunbird, I need you to go super, and take out Anaconda, Black Mamba, Copperhead, Cotton Mouth, and Slither. Super-G, you got Coachwhip, Bruiser, King Cobra, and Puff Adder. Remember guys, we're faster and more versatile, if you need to switch, or need a team up, just give a shout out. Also, I think this goes without saying, but our plans hardly ever go as well in real time as we'd like them to, if you find yourself in a tight spot, don't get caught up on one opponent, mix it up, and look for a new angle. Ready team?"

"Hold on," Allyson said. "I know this might seem like a no brainer, but let's try and avoid busting out the weapons. Like Agent Coulson said, this is gonna be the second time the world sees us. We've already come off as dangerous kids, this'll be our one chance to show them that we're heroes, we can't do that if we issue public executions."

"But what about cutting through the cybernetic stuff?" I asked her.

"Storm-Lord, you can create lightning constructs, Super-G, you can crumple steel like paper, need I say more?"

Grant and I exchanged a glance, and nodded to each other. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't actually thinking of killing them, but the sword did start to become the default answer to me now; that was something i'd have to put a cap on every now and then.

"Alright then," I said. "Now are we ready?"

Grant and Allyson nodded, a bit of excitement in their eyes.

"Ok then Delta Force, let's go, we got this!"

I activated my Storm Form, and took off with Grant and Allyson as we raced for the Brooklyn Bridge.

"_We got this?" _Grant asked me as we flew. "_Seriously? That again?"_

"_F*(# you, I like it!" _I snapped back at him.

"_Storm-Lord!" _Allyson thought at me like an angry mother.

"_Sorry," _I thought back to her. "_But it's not like you haven't cussed before."_

She didn't answer, but we didn't have time to banter anyway; the bridge was in sight. As Grant and Allyson zoomed straight for the SUVs, I took off directly upwards, and bonded with the dark grey snow clouds, making them/myself expand and condense into thousands of hand constructs. Grant and Allyson zoomed the falling vans to safety, faster than the Serpent Society could react, and as thousands of cloud hands rained from the sky to pick up the ones on the bridges (I put them on the nearest stretch of land I could place them on), I doubt they could've done anything, except pray that it wasn't actually Thor that they were dealing with. Rescue only took about 20 seconds (it takes time to become 1,000 hands, you try it!), and I landed next to Grant and Allyson, as we stared down the Serpent Society from about 50 meters away. They were kinda intimidating in the way that circus clowns are scary to kids, but nothing more. Anaconda was especially pissed. Her nostrils flared, she screamed 'KILL THE LITTLE F*(#$!", and she and her squad charged mine. I noticed how they were kinda fast (like faster than supposed to be), and were even treading on top of ice and snow like it was a baseball field, but Allyson quickly put a stop to their hype. She glowed really bright, and released a wave of golden fire across the bridge, knocking all but Bruiser off of their feet, and melting all the snow and ice into small puddles of water. We charged full steam ahead.

Grant barreled into Bruiser, giving him a massive flying punch to the face, and getting a nice little combo off on him for a bit; that is before Bruiser actually blocked one of his punches, forcing Grant to double back and attack from a different angle. I didn't know what was more surprising, the fact that those hits didn't knock the big guy's lights out, or the fact that he was fast enough to block a punch from Grant, who was going at about Mach 4 on the speed scale. I looked ahead, and yep, my fears were confirmed. The downed members of the Serpent Society were already up and at em' when they should've been frozen in mid-air; whatever Doom had equipped them with, it clearly included liquid speed.

If you think that this was a bad thing, don't, things could've been much worse. Besides, they weren't even that fast, if Grant, Allyson, and I were a 10, these guys were a 6; fast enough to notice, but not enough to be a threat. Speaking of which, Allyson went Super Sunbird, tackled Anaconda, took her airborne, and proceeded to beat the ever living hell out of her; even when Anaconda managed to wrap around her,(so she WAS tangible in Super Sunbird) Allyson just powered out of it, and continued beating her to a pulp. As a bit of a bonus, she created Sun Warrior constructs to keep her end of the Society at bay. The constructs were getting systematically trashed, but at least it gave me time to focus on my people. I created a thunderbolt, zigzagged between various snake people, and gunned for Bushmaster and Rattler, slicing off their bionic tails, and hitting them with a rapid succession of Vibration Punches. This helped me get a good feel for how tough the empowered Serpent Society members were. For one, even though they had the power of Hercules, it was too spread out for it to be overly effective. While Bushmaster was down, I hit him with two Vibration Punches to the face, and the guy was out cold. Rattler tired to take advantage of my kneeling state, and it was so cute, the guy actually thought he was attacking me off guard. I snapped my fingers, knocked him back with a Phantom Bolt, and hit him with a running Vibration Punch, which was so hard, he actually dented one of the support cables (just a little bit) on the bridge before falling on the ground, as unconscious as a sleeping baby. I felt a thud a little bit away from me, and saw Anaconda in the same position. This was a good start, only about 30 seconds in, and three Serpents were down, we were on a good pace. My Speed Sense went off behind me, and I ducked as a venom bolt sailed over my head. Asp was charging straight for me, throwing a right cross at my face. I dodged it, side flipped over her, and just barely managed to get a body shield over me, blocking the brunt of King Cobra's energy blast. The blast itself wasn't that strong, and was only barely enough to knock me back a few feet, but the Serpent Society attempted to capitalize on the opportunity real quick. As soon as I could even get in a rough sitting position, I felt Asp, Sidewinder, King Cobra, Princess Python, Death Addler, and Black Racer either blasting at me, pouncing at me, or sicking their big ass snake on me. I quickly raised a barrier around myself, actually cutting the giant snake's head off in the process, and before they could try to break down my barrier with their strength (which may or may not have been possible), I swept their legs out from under them, by creating a small tornado around my barrier. As I was taking them for a spin, I noticed Allyson fighting Black Mamba, who was balancing on what looked like a pillar of swirling black liquid. They were in a power battle, with Allyson's energy blast slowly but steadily over taking Black Mamba's. By the looks of it, Allyson wasn't hard pressed in this fight, she was just trying to get to the right power level to steamroll Black Mamba, without melting most of the bridge. I decided to help her out, by making a small spark of lightning flash in Black Mamba's face, making her drop her blast, and get decked by Allyson's. She rocketed off into the distance, but Allyson caught her, punched her hard in the face, and dropped her limp body on the ground. Grant wasn't doing that bad on his end either. Like Allyson and I, he probably could've crushed Bruiser with a few all out punches, but the sonic booms would probably damage the structure off the bridge. Instead, Grant was playing a game of dodge, block, and then beat the $#! out of his opponent. Bruiser couldn't fight to save his life, but he could take a punch, and barely even moved while Grant piled the cross punches, uppercuts, and power kicks, on him. Bruiser did manage to block one of Grant's punches, and send him soaring backwards with his own counter, but after a quick recovery, followed by Grant beating the hell out of Copperhead, who also fell for the whole 'thinks we can be easily tripped up' act, Grant rocketed into Bruiser, hitting him with harder punches and kicks (the guy knocked teeth out of the poor sap's face).

"_Hey guys!" _I thought to them. "_You're doing a good job, but I have a problem here. I got four Serpents in a tornado merry-go-round, and I don't know what to do with them."_

"_If you can get Bruiser off my tray for a little bit," _Grant responded. "_Then i'd be glad to help with the solution."_

"_Don't worry about that Super-G," _Allyson (who single handedly knocked out Fer-De-Lance, and pulverized Slither with train constructs) responded. "_One gravity enhancing Sunspot coming up."_

Bruiser suddenly fell to one knee, unable to move as a golden circle of molten light held him to the ground. I immediately launched the twirling Serpents into the air, activated my Thunder Form, and flew after them, with Grant and Allyson. It was basically a vortex of pain, lasting around 1-2 seconds. The three of us flew around frantically, taking shots at whoever's head was in range. We might've gave Princess Python a minor concussion (most likely), and I was pretty sure King Cobra was never gonna see straight again, but hey, we were down four more serpents after the incredible display of aerodynamics, so why complain? Puff Adder tired to make up for his teammates failures. He started to grow, up to about 30 ft tall, and roared as he charged us; he was absolutely adorable.

"_Delta Cannon?" _I asked Allyson.

"_You know it." _She responded eagerly.

We combined our respective energies together, and after a one second charge, we released the blue/gold Kamehameha on Puff Adder's face. The blast knocked him hard, like a punch from God, but it didn't knock him out entirely; Grant took care of that with a hard flying punch to his forehead. Now, the only Serpents left, were Bruiser, Coachwhip, and Copperhead.

I went straight after Coachwhip, who thought it was a smart idea to slash at the guy who was wreathed in lightning, with electric whips. I caught them, absorbed them, and flicked my finger, sending her sprawling back with a high focused bolt of electricity (don't worry, I had it set on 'not Goblin' level, she was fine). Allyson proceeded to uppercut Copperhead 20 ft in the air, knock him back with a giant bat construct, and plant him in the ground with a meteor construct from above, when that didn't take him out of the game, Allyson pulled him back with a grapple hook construct, and punched his lights out, with one more uppercut. Now, Bruiser was the last man standing.

I'll give it to the guy, he could take some hits. Grant had him under siege with punch after punch after punch, and the guy still wouldn't go down.

"_Need some help?" _I asked him. "_We're not busy at the moment."_

"_Ha ha, real funny," _Grant responded. "_And for the record, i'd have this guy in one shot, but if I go too hard, I might blow a hole in the bridge, if this guy was in the air, that'd be a different story."_

"_Is that all you need!?" _Allyson mentally laughed at him. "_Why didn't you say so? Here, lemme help."_

She snapped her fingers, and a wave of light erupted under Bruiser's feet, sending him rocketing into the sky.

"Much better!" Grant shouted, as he took off after Bruiser, and decked him with an uppercut so hard, I could actually feel it from the ground.

"_Thanks Sunbird!" _he thought to her, as he flew back down with Bruiser's unconscious body. "_This guy was starting to get annoying, let's hurry up and chain these D-Listers."_

We quickly summoned and put cuffs on all of the Serpent Society, and then I phoned S.H.I.E.L.D. for further instructions.

"Yo, Fury," I said once he answered. "We just bagged the Serpent Society, what now?"

"Leave them there," he responded. "We've got agents on jets coming to bring them in, all you need to do is get back to base before the news choppers show up."

"Got it," I said. "On the way."

"Report back to base?" Grant asked. "Avoid the news choppers? We are so gonna miss out on valuable face time here!"

"We did our job, Super-G," Allyson responded, as she came down from Super Sunbird. "We saved the people, rounded up the bad guys, and nothing got destroyed, let's quit while we're ahead here."

"Fair enough, but can we at least fly off into the distance a little bit before warping back to base, it'll send a good message to the public, show them that we're not one of those Daredevil-like heroes, who kick ass, and then leave without a trace."

Grant and Allyson looked at me, and I shrugged, I mean, it couldn't hurt. I activated my Thunder Form, and took off with Grant and Allyson.

"_So," _she playfully thought to me as we flew. "_Getting closer to enjoying being a hero?"_

"_Shut up," _I thought to her. "_It's not like I enjoyed that or nothin."_

"_Then why are you smiling?"_

"_I'm thinking about my leather jackets."_

"_You know Power Rangers count as heroes, right?."_

"_Whatever."_

"_You two totally like each other," _Grant thought to us both.

And on that awkward note, we teleported back to the Helicarrier.


	14. Chapter 14: Party Crashers

**Chapter 14: Party Crashers**

We flashed back to the infirmary (did Mrs. Kennedy always assume we'd only ever have to retreat, plus be mortally wounded?), and Fury contacted me again.

"Is everyone alright?" he asked us. "Any broken bones, bruises, cellular instability?"

"Touche, Fury," I responded. "And no, we're all good, but The Serpent Society, they were way too strong and fast for it to be considered natural, Doom obviously has the stone Hercules in his camp."

Fury was silent for a moment, guess even he was trying to pretend that not even one of the stones could be in Doom's hands.

"The possibility of getting all the stones before Doom got even one, that was a slim to none. The important thing here, is that you saved thousands of lives, nobody got hurt, and we know more about Doom's progress in the hunt. Good job Delta Force, you've earned that dance tonight, hit the showers or whatever, and get ready, you'll have to be in the air by 7:30."

With that, Fury hung up, and we all powered down out of our battle suits.

"So," Grant said. "What now?"

"Now," said Allyson. "You two get showered and cleaned up. Grant, slick your hair back before you get dressed, the whole farm boy hair style will do you no favors tonight. If you two have time, go ahead and eat something, but leave me alone until 7, I need all the time I can get to ready myself."

This time, even I didn't argue, girls take forever to get ready for fancy party events (or at least from what i've heard). Grant, Allyson, and I took the elevator to our floors, and I immediately got in the shower once I got to my room (twice in one day, a new record). After a good shower, and a change into some shorts and a yellow T-shirt, I headed down to Grant's room, and knocked on the door.

"What up bro?" he asked me as he opened the door.

"Nothin'," I said. "Just bored, wanna watch some TV or something?"

"Sure, come on in."

I spread out on his recliner chair, and flipped the TV to some Law &amp; Order as Grant got changed into his PJ's (he was still wearing his bathrobe when he let me in).

"Law &amp; Order huh?" he asked me as he sat in the beanbag chair. "Not bad."

"Dude, this show rocks," I said.

"It did, back when Stabler was still a part of it."

"Well, you're not wrong there, but the show still kicks ass."

"Whatever helps you tune in every week."

We watched some Law &amp; Order, Spongebob, Drake &amp; Josh, and a bunch of other stuff until it was time for dinner. We ate a little bit, talked for 30 minutes, and then went our separate ways to get ready for the ball; true to her word, Allyson did not make an appearance for chow. I went back to my room, and found all of the clothes I bought, hung up on my clothes rack. Maybe they were teleported in, or maybe Coulson had someone drop them off, but as long as I had them ready to go, none of the options mattered. I quickly went to work, changing out of my shorts and shirt, brushing my teeth, spraying on some cologne, and putting my suit on from the ground up. I could've done it all at super speed, but I needed to burn some time anyway; besides, I wasn't all that great at putting on suits, it was better to take it slow. I got as far as putting on my pants, socks, shirt, shoes and vest, before I realized two things. A: I didn't have a rubber band to put my hair back. B: I didn't know jack $#!+ about putting on a tie. I was able to solve the first problem easy enough. At the bottom of the bag, there was this extra strip of red and black cloth. It wasn't much, but it was big enough to wrap around my dreads, and small enough to where it wouldn't be visible after I put it on, and most important, flexible enough to work as a makeshift rubber band. I took care of the problem in about 10 seconds, and stopped for a moment to look myself in the mirror. I looked good, especially with my hair back (although the blue eyes did throw off the color scheme a little bit). Now, all I had left was to get this damn tie around my neck. I didn't know how to do it, and I wasn't about to let Allyson know I wasn't capable enough to work a tie, so I went straight to Grant's room.

"Hey bro," Grant said, his hair already slicked back, wearing everything but his suit jacket. "What's up?"

"I need help," I said. "Don't know how to put on a tie, don't laugh or i'll zap you, and are you aware that I have a name?"

"Won't laugh, get in here, and are you aware that I don't give a damn?"

We stared each other down, trying to be intimidating, but we ended up laughing uncontrollably. Honestly, as long as it wasn't insulting, I didn't care what he called me. Grant quickly fastened the tie around my neck (yeah, we kept it at a distance, get over it we're dudes), and went back to putting on the rest of his suit, admiring the way he looked in his fedora.

"Why don't you take a picture?" I teased him. "That way you'll have someone to spend the night with."

"Good idea," he said. "Selfie time, get over here!"

Ok, that was unexpected, but I still laughed and posed with my friend for a selfie (which he immediately put on Instagram and Facebook).

"Alright," he said looking at his watch. "It's 7:05, what do you wanna do for 25 minutes?"

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Watch more TV?"

"We've watched enough TV, and as mature young adults, it is our responsibility to….f*(# it, what's on Cartoon Network?"

We laughed, flipped the TV to a random episode of Regular Show, and killed 15 minutes. Afterwards, we made our way to Allyson's room.

"Dude!" Grant said suddenly on the elevator. "Tell me you got her flowers or something!"

"What?" I asked him. "Why?"

"Officially, this is your first date!" he continued. "To a high profile Christmas party no less, tell me you at least have some all-star game plan to make this night go super amazing!"

"Well….I was kinda banking on the idea that we'd hit it off, have some fun, and get to know each other better. Is that wrong?"

"No it's not wrong, in fact it's a solid base plan. But come on Jason, you can't just be basic with this, lay down some game, or strategy, charisma, something!"

"Dude, I have game! It's just subtle, more refined. I'd rather stick with the plan of getting to know a girl, and then working my way up from there."

"That's how you get friend zoned."

"That is so not how it-"

Grant held up a hand, and sushed me real quick. My instinct at a first was to zap him to Kingdom Come, but then when I looked over and saw that we were at Allyson's room, I understood. He stepped to the side, gestured for me to go on, and I knocked on Allyson's door.

"Just a second!" she called out.

In actuality, it was almost 20 seconds before she opened the door, but God was it worth it. You already know how the dress looks, so I won't over explain that to you, but like I said at the store, Allyson was the one that brought it all together. Her hair was in long blonde curls reaching just past her shoulders. She was wearing a light shade of makeup that made her face pop (although she was just as beautiful without it). She had red eyeshadow on, glitter in her hair, and dark red lipstick that almost made me spark (seriously, if I get excited, I spark).

"Wow," I said plainly, almost at a loss for words. "You are absolutely breathtaking."

"Thanks," she said, blushing so hard, her face was almost as red as her dress. "You're no stranger to good looks either."

I blushed to, kinda getting tongue tied until Grant saved me with his third wheeling.

"Don't forget ya boy over here," he said. "Don't get me wrong Allyson, you're hot, and Jason looks magazine cover material, but i'm on a whole other level of sexy, it's almost unfair."

We all laughed, and Grant called for yet another selfie.

"Ok then," Allyson said. "Shall we get going?"

"Hold up," Grant said. "Everyone got their morpher on them?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling my jacket sleeve to show him.

Allyson on the other hand, was very interested in the ceiling all of a sudden.

"Allyson?" Grant and I asked her.

"Ok!" she admitted. "I left it on the counter, but come on guys, we're going to a ball, we won't need them anyway!"

"Hero 101," Grant said. "Always be ready to spring into action at any given moment."

"But it'll look weird bulging from my gloves."

"I'll hold onto it then," I said. "But Grant's right, we should hold on to our morphers, just in case."

Allyson didn't like the idea of our one night out getting ruined by work, but she at least resigned to the notion of letting me hold on to her morpher (yeah that's official too, but that was already a thing). Afterwards, I took her arm in mine (and Grant says I don't have game), and the two of us, and Grant, made our way to the deck of the Helicarrier.

Honestly, we had to be somewhere close to the northeast, because it was as cold as $#!+ up here. My teeth were chattering, and even though I played it off as best as I could, I was freezing my ass off. Yet Grant and Allyson were just fine.

"How come you guys aren't freezing?" I asked them through chattering teeth.

"I dunno," Grant shrugged. "Lately, extreme cold or heat dosen't really bother me. Makes sense considering I can withstand the heat of the earth's core, I could probably take a dip in the Antarctic Ocean and still be fine."

"Same here," Allyson said. "I'm basically a living solar battery. I don't get to hot, and I have way too much solar energy stored in me to ever get cold. But if you're cold Jason, I can help you there."

She pressed a finger to my head, swept it down quickly, and I felt a wave of heat flow through me; all of a sudden, I wasn't cold anymore.

"Why didn't you do that before?" I asked her, laughing and hugging her.

"You didn't ask," she replied smartly.

"Fair enough."

The three of us waited for another three minutes, before we heard the familiar sound of propulsion jets in the air. We were expecting Coulson to show up in his flying mini-and again, but were totally surprised to see him pull up in a flying limo (totally sweet!).

"Looking good you guys," he told us as we climbed into the back seat. "Definitely worth the hour and a half it took you to pick out the clothes."

"Actually," Allyson said as we buckled up. "I picked them all out-"

"Not the dress!" Grant said through a cough.

We both laughed, while Allyson slumped back into her seat, rolling her eyes and pouting slightly. Coulson laughed a little bit too, and after a few seconds of prep, he mashed the gas, and we went flying to New York supersonic style. We must have been closer to New York than last time, cuz it only took us about ten minutes to get there. However, since we couldn't find a good place to land and become visible, we sacrificed convenience to landed in a random alley, and drove the rest of the way (which ate up the rest of the time in full). When we got there, my heart nearly stopped. See, I didn't really pay attention to the address of the party, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't know where we were going. So I was surprised (and mortified), when we pulled up at my school; you know, the one where I almost killed a guy!? Grant, Allyson, and I got out of the car, Coulson drove off, saying he'd be back to pick us up at 12, and I was left to deal with the pounding of my heart.

"Jason?" Allyson asked me, catching on to the fact that I was really, really stiff all of a sudden. "What's wrong?"

"Huh?" I asked her, trying to play it of. "Oh, nothing, just chilly again."

Stupid lie, not even a good one.

"Jason," Allyson warned me. "What did we say about keeping us in the dark?"

I sighed. Either way, this might come up later on tonight, might as well own up.

"Long story short," I started. "This is my school."

She looked confused for a bit, but the lights quickly came on.

"You mean-" she started.

"Yep." I cut her off.

"Does everybody here know?"

"Doubt it, I don't recognize any of the people in line. Besides, only a handful of the people who go to school here are rich, there would only be about 20 people who know me here at worst."

"But you're sure this won't be a problem, people won't try to mess with you, right?"

Did I detect a sense of defensiveness in her voice? This was her night, and she was more concerned with my well being, than a once in a lifetime (as far as we were concerned, we weren't even supposed to be here) night she had worked so hard to get Grant, me, and herself ready for. I kinda swooned a bit in my mind.

"Probably not," I said. "I'll barely be visible in the crowd anyway."

Allyson scanned my eyes, searching for any sign of untruthfulness, but conceded to the fact that I was being honest, or at least brave.

"Ok," she sighed. "But don't try and hide things from me, if we need to leave, i'm fine with that."

We waited behind Grant in a line that took five minutes for us to get through. Of course we had to pass through the security guards who took our tickets, pass through metal detectors, and walk through the school buss walkway, which led through the school's back entrance. We walked through the right turn just behind the cafeteria, and walked through another long hallway that spilled out into the gym (figures). I gotta say though, the setup looked fantastic. Red, green and white drapes dominated the ceiling in a web of Christmas colors. Strobe lights flashed in every direction, and yes, Allyson's rhinestone embedded dress caught the light just right. Half of the area was occupied by dozens of round tables covered with white cloth. The other half was empty, obviously for dancing. To the immediate left of the gym, was a super long table (It stretched from the gym entrance, to the gym exit doors). I didn't see everything on it, but I did see a several farms worth of cooked cows, fancy fruit, a $#!+ ton of fancy looking bread rolls, and a bunch of large gold platters covering God knows how many more delicious looking food; not to mention the chocolate and caramel fountains. There were a good bit of adult chaperones scattered around the place, but I could tell they were more laxed about their job; as long as no fights broke out, they were probably just here for show.

It looked like this first part of the evening was purely for meet n' greet/show n' tell, and Allyson and Grant were not shy about showing off. Grant immediately broke away from Allyson and I, and started talking (flirting) with the first attractive brunette in a white dress that he could find; Allyson had other plans for us.

"How many girls have you taken to a dance/ball?" she asked me over the blare of cheesy holiday music.

"You'd be my first," I responded.

"Ok then, well use that big brain of yours to process this. Walk up to people, introduce us, and let me handle the rest of the pleasantries. Don't be too stiff, don't death glare anyone, and above all, don't electrocute anybody, even if they're annoying."

"Got it, let's get to work."

For the next 20 minutes, I was subject to introducing myself and Allyson to people I didn't know, barely cared about, and had no interest in getting to know (what? It's not like I would see them again). It would always be me doing about a minute of talking, the usual _where are you from_, and _how'd you get invited_, questions, and of course, _where'd you get that suit/dress? _In the exact order of the questions: NYC/Alabama, we have our connections, and I just let Allyson do the talking when it came to our clothes. While she was talking, I smiled and nodded, even laughing and contributing to the stories of how we picked out our clothes (which the girls either loved, or hated because they didn't have them). However, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something troubling. Adrian Lucas, Clark Morris, and Henry Rogers; aka, a few of the only other rich kids that went to my school, the guys who saw blast Crosby into the floor. My heart rate started to increase a little, but I told myself to stay cool. The lighting in the room wasn't good enough for a person to recognize faces, besides, there were hundreds of kids shuffling around in here. As long as I kept my cool, I could probably avoid them the whole night, and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have to bring down the wrath of the sky on these losers. So yeah, I kept my cool, and rolled with the rest of the formalities (actually paying attention to, and being more friendly to the new faces) until the announcer told everyone to take their seats at the banquet tables. Allyson, Grant, and I sat at the same table, along with the brunette with the white dress (who was giving Grant googly eyes), and her date (who was both non caring, but at the same time, pissed at Grant's existence).

"Hello esteemed guests!" said some blond discount Leo Dicaprio through his microphone. "Welcome to St. Mark's Annual Christmas ball, I am your host, Demitrus Evans!"

We clapped for him, and for ten minutes listened to him drone on about how excited he was to be here. We gave props to the people who helped prepare this, volunteered for chaperoning, and the cooks who worked tirelessly to prepare the food. He made us bow our heads, he blessed the food, and we finally got to the part to where I could eat. Ironically enough, this part was kinda fun, for completely unconventional reasons. Beside the plates, napkins, and silverware, an iPad was next to everyone's immediate right. As soon as the food was blessed, the tablets blinked on, and everyone grabbed them. On screen was a message that said: "Swipe to go to the menu, your food will be brought to you. Also, keep the tablet, the charger is in your gift bags under your seats, have a Merry Christmas." Yeah, all I saw was table service, free Apple stuff, and Merry Christmas to Jason.

I ordered at least three steaks, a lot of rice, pork, exotically cooked veggies, and enough chocolate/caramel covered fruit, to put a diabetic down for the count. My super metabolism (yeah I have it, but almost all speedsters do) had already destroyed the meal I ate on the Helicarrier, so I had no qualms about eating half of my body weight in food; hell, Allyson and Grant was eating double of what I was, and had absolutely no shame in it. We ate, talked, laughed, and enjoyed each other's company, I even bothered to remember Melissa's (brunette, white dress), and Jonathan's (her side piece) names. After 30 minutes of eating, while listening to some live entertainment, we moved on to my favorite part of any type of party: the dancing.

Surprise! There's actually something I enjoy doing with the general public, and even then, dancing is like the ultimate exception. Even as a middle schooler (when mom forced me to go to every last dance/social gathering she could), I had a natural talent for dance (break dancing). I constantly practiced newer and harder moves with dubstep music, watched the best dance battles on Youtube, and would occasionally go to street competitions if I could make up an excuse to stay out late. Long story short, I loved fast dancing, I was good at it, and if you ever stepped up for a battle, you'd probably get knocked on your ass in record time. However, the first dance of the night wasn't fast or battle worthy, it was a slow song; a calm version of "Jingle Bells" to be exact. Oh boy! Maybe I should've talked to Grant about this one, because my experiences with slow dances were very limited; thank God Allyson was making the first moves, because I probably would've done something stupid. She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulled me close to her, and on a hunch, I wrapped my hands around her waist. Our dance was a simple side-to-side, while turning around slowly in a small circle. As we danced, I was more aware of everything than I had ever been. I could smell her flower perfume, the spearmint breath spray, even the way her skin felt against my neck. We never took our eyes away from each other's for the first minute of the dance, her brown eyes acting as inescapable gravity points, and my blue ones, boring into her's; I was actually scared I might zap her with my Thunder Vision.

"What's the matter?" she asked me, that maddeningly innocent/seductively happy smile etched on her face. "Scared?"

"Of you," I laughed. "Only a little, but that's not the point."

"Yeah? Then what is?"

"The fact that you are so incredibly beautiful, and it's because of you that this is probably the best night of my life."

She smiled even brighter, tightened the hold she had around my neck, and pulled in to me even closer, her face rested against my shoulder as she softly, and beautifully sung the lyrics to the rest of the song. That was definitely the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me, since Hannah Willows and I kissed one time under the school bleachers (we were more or less friends with benefits for a while, just without the sex); naturally, the song list would cut it in a grinding halt, by playing "Kiss You" by One Direction. Allyson and I laughed, found our own beat to the rhythm, and started dancing with the crowd.

I'll say this about the ball, the guy in charge of the song list knew how to keep the crowd turnt up. The tracks ranged from Nikki Minaj, Trey Songz, and Young Money, to 1D, BTR, popular radio songs, basic party songs (Cupid Shuffle, Dj Remx Electric Slide) and some Christmas remixes; they even mixed in a few dubstep and slow songs to change the pace every now and then. No group was left out, and the party had a well balance of white/black music. I danced with Allyson for most of the upbeat pop songs, not trying to out do her, rather than match her rhythm, letting her shine with her elegant/music video dance style. When it came to the fast songs, the ones that I could battle to, I took advantage of them entirely. Like I said, dance battles are common at organized dances, and when it comes to dance battles, boys will be boys. I trashed about five guys in rapid succession with my combination of handstands, flips, coordinated body popping and locking, and basically giving off the impression that I come from a long line of contortionists. All the battles took place in circles, so it's not like this was a private thing, and it's amazing how the best dancer in the room can turn into everyone's best friend. Hell, Grant and I even went at it for a minute, and don't get me wrong, he was good with his odd mix of hip hop dance and step choreography, but even he fell to the might of my overpowered dance skills. For other songs, such as "Anaconda", "Touchin' Lovin", "Rude Boy", and the like, the only two words that meant anything to those songs, were the words twerk and grind. For Grant, those barriers that would make most girls cautious about dancing with a random stranger, they were almost nonexistent to him. Seriously, in under 20 minutes, the guy was already neck deep in girls who just couldn't get enough of him. Don't feel bad for their dates though, the party was basically a giant free for all, everyone (accept Allyson and I) was fair game. So how did this affect me and Allyson? Well, at first I thought she wasn't that type of girl (which I would've been totally fine with), but she proved me so incredibly wrong, when she took my arms, put them around her waist, and twerked/grinded on me within the first 20 seconds of "Anaconda". I won't even lie, my mind, and pelvic region, was in Heaven; without getting into specifics about the feeling, let's just say Allyson knew her way around the darker side of dancing.

So yeah, the ball was a lot of fun, most fun i've had in years. I didn't know how long Grant, Allyson, and I danced with the crowd, to be honest, I stopped checking my watch after 9:30, all I knew was that after at least and hour of hot, sweaty, hyped up dancing, I needed a drink; Allyson followed me to the punch bowl, where we drank 5 cups each, laughing and panting furiously.

"Best party ever!" she said, leaning on me slightly.

"I know, right!?" I responded. "I've never had so much fun since-"

"HEY FREAK!" shouted a familiar voice. "THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!?"

I turned around, 1000% certain that the comment was aimed at me; I was so totally right. Adrian, Clark, and Henry were making a beeline for me, their faces livid in the strobe lights, all of them ready to….well, I would use the word 'fight', but that would imply they actually stood a chance of winning. Nah, they were steppin up to get knocked down, and if I was on my own, i'd have had no problem beating the hell out of them, I wouldn't have even used my powers (no need). But then I took into account that Allyson was here. I didn't wanna ruin her night by losing my cool, so I opted to play the diplomat for once, and hope nobody pissed me off enough for sparks to start flying.

"I'm not gonna ask again freak!" Adrian said up close to my face. "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE, YOU SHOULD BE IN A CELL AFTER WHAT YOU DID TO ETHAN!"

My pulse quicked, both from anger and guilt.

"I was invited!" I started. "And what I did to Crosby was an accident, you wanna settle this, fine, but not here, not-"

My Speed Sense went off, and Adrian punched at me with an uppercut, in super slow motion. I grabbed his fist, twisted it, and after coming down from Speed Mode, gave him a slight shove in the face, that sent him staggering backwards. Allyson looked at me, her eyes a weird mix of anger, worry, and annoyance, although I couldn't exactly tell if the anger and annoyance was aimed at me, or Adrian and his goons (Adrian was basically Ethan's second in command).

"Dude, stop!" I shouted at him. "I don't wanna hurt you, any of you, and in case you losers haven't caught on, I'M ON A FREAKING DATE, SHOW SOME MANNERS!"

"MANNERS!" Adrian roared at me (the music was way too loud for the chaperones to hear us, plus I doubt they really cared about rich brats who would probably never work a day in their lives). "YOU MEAN LIKE THE WAY YOU PUT CROSBY IN A COMA WITH YOU FREAKSHOW MUTIE POWERS!?"

Adrian, Clark, and Henry started closing in on me and Allyson, our night was clearly gonna get worse before it got better.

"OH YEAH!" Adrian continued. "DIDN'T YOU HEAR, GIRL. YOU'RE BOYFRIEND HERE'S A MUTIE, NEARLY KILLED MY BOY A FEW DAYS BACK, I'D GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM IF I WERE YOU!"

"A mutant?" Allyson calmly responded, her voice full of venomous sarcasm. "You don't say."

She balled her fists, and took up a fighting stance. Adrian laughed at her, sending my anger to levels I thought I could never reach even on my worse day.

"REALLY BITCH!?" he responded. "WHAT THE F (# ARE YOU GONNA DO!?"

He made a motion to grab Allyson, and before I could rip his arm off, she hit across the face with a slap so hard, even over the roar of the music, I could hear it clear as day. Adrian scrambled backwards, clutching the side his face.

"THAT'S IT!" he yelled. "ENOUGH OF THIS $#!+, HENRY, CLARK, LET'S-"

"BOYS!" Grant, who was so stealthy in his approach, even I didn't see him coming, said in his still jolly party boy voice. "WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE!? ARE WE HAVING FUN, OR ARE WE HAVING FUN!?"

Adrian and his goons were at a loss for words, and I could clearly see why. Even though Grant was a stocky guy, he was only about and inch or so taller than them. Theoretically, they shouldn't have been afraid of a guy they could probably take, but Grant was the exception. The guy practically radiated strength, even when he wasn't trying to be, he was intimidating as hell. Plus, while Grant was masking his anger in lightheartedness, none of us really bought into it. Adrian and his goons were giving me and Allyson trouble, Grant caught on to that, and was now issuing a silent warning for them to beat it.

"This is none of your business pretty boy!" Adrian said, trying to be tough. "Get lost!"

"Maybe you didn't get my message," Grant said, now deadly calm and serious, but still maintaining that million dollar smile. "These are my friends, and you're giving them a really hard time right now."

He moved so fast, there was no way Adrian and his goons could react in time. He punched Adrian and clark in the face with two quick, simultaneous jabs, bashed their heads together, and pushed them into Henry, who was spared any further damage. Allyson and I stood firm next to Grant, ready to kick some ass with our friend. We must've looked pretty fierce, cuz Adrian and his goons finally looked like they got the picture.

"Beat it!" Grant yelled at them, and they scramed like rats.

"Ya'll ok?" he asked us.

"Super," Allyson responded, shaking off her anger. "Thanks so much Grant, you rock."

She gave him a hug, and Grant dapped me up before going back to the party.

"Jason?" Allyson asked me, turning my face to her's. "It's ok, you warned me about this, please don't be angry, they aren't worth the brain cells, just focus on me, alright?"

I nodded, trying for a brave smile.

"The night's not over yet, bolt boy," she continued. "Let's make the most of it."

She grabbed my hands, and pulled me in close as we started dancing to another slow song. As we danced, I felt my anger start to ebb away, my ability to maintain my rage was powerless while looking into Allyson's eyes, her beautiful voice enhancing the lyrics to "Mary Did You Know". Another slow song played directly after that one, but it didn't even matter what the name of it was, I could care less as Allyson finally broke the silence.

"You ok, Jason," she asked me, her eyes full of so much concern, I was surprised they could hold it all.

"Yeah," I responded. "Just a little shaken is all."

She chuckled a bit.

"Jason Fuller," she said. "The great Storm-Lord, who fought monsters, magic, and villains; brought to his knees by a few common bullies, poor baby."

"Cute," I said, deciding to play along with her game. "Nice slap by the way, and i'm sorry about that, should've known my past would catch up to me."

"That's not your fault, Jason. And I don't wanna hear about what happened to the other guy, all I need to know is the man I see in front of me, holding me tight."

"You sure about that? I can be a little dangerous sometimes."

"Right. Because i've NEVER done something even remotely dangerous."

"Yeah, yeah."

We danced for another minute in silence, but never taking our eyes off of one another.

"Jason?" Allyson asked me, in the last few verses of the song. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything." I responded.

"Do you think i'm beautiful?"

"Beautiful would be an understatement, you are nothing short of heavenly."

She smiled, and continued with the questions.

"Do you like who I am, you know, as a person?"

"You're the coolest girl i've ever met," I responded. "You're smart, funny, compassionate, energetic, and you kick all kinds off ass."

She cheesed even more, and I was almost certain she might start tearing up.

"So," she continued. "You think i'm heavenly, and a bunch of other good stuff, got it. So that means you like me, right?"

"Yeah," I said, before I could stop the words from escaping my lips. "Absolutely."

She pulled in closer to me, her face only a few inches from mine.

"Then why haven't you kissed me back yet?" she asked me, her voice a perfect mix of innocent longing, and lustful desire.

Again, fighting super villains came more naturally to me than this (that's so unbelievably sad). But looking into Allyson's eyes, I knew I had to try, she put herself out on a limb for me time and time again; it was time for me to take a leap of faith too. I tightened my grip around her, and moved my face closer to hers; my lips touched hers for like a millisecond (if even that), before my Speed Sense went off.

It was so unbelievably odd. For one, my Speed Sense was usually close range, not extending past my small aura of static electricity. But then I realized, my body was automatically using the Power Grid to extend my range, I probably could've sensed a sniper rifle's bullet trying to deck me from a mile away. Also, for some weird reason, the air also played a factor in the enhanced Speed Sense. It was rough, and I didn't have a clue how it worked, but as the dozens of hostiles were rocketing at us from above the school (I was senseing them though God knows how many pounds of concrete and metal), my radar picked them up. What were they exactly? 7 feet tall, humanoid shaped, and coming in hot. Hell, I wasn't the only one that picked up their tail, cuz Allyson's head also jerked to the ceiling, she could sense whatever it was too. It was way too late for us to do anything now, we were out in public, we couldn't morph yet, or we'd out ourselves. Instead, by a silent agreement, we let the things crash through the ceiling, causing the panic we needed to cover us.

As the Doombots (yeah, they were Doombots, yes I knew what Doombots were, everyone did), crashed through the ceiling, chunks of rubble, big enough to crush at least twenty people by the handful, fell to the ground like anvils. Luckily, Grant was good at the whole fast acting thing. He quickly tapped into Blitz, and I tapped into my lowest level of Speed Mode to help him out. If you're wondering why that was, it's because I don't get my lightning trial until I get to at least a 7/10 in Speed Mode, in SMS, the lightning trial was all but guaranteed; I didn't wanna fry the civilians, and I didn't wanna give myself away. Besides, I was so fast, even without trying all that hard, even on the lowest level of Speed Mode, I could still run and react faster than people blink. So yeah, Grant and I grabbed all of the party goers, and chaperones, and moved them all to the far end of the gym, where a corridor that led to an exit was nearby. I made sure to grab Allyson, and dump her with the rest of the group, but before you brand me as the worst date ever, Grant and I purposely tumbled with the crowd too; again, we had a secret identity to maintain. I quickly scanned the Doombots, and two my surprise, saw that they had some type of core in their chest, which were either a familiar shade of orange, or a brilliant circle of yellow. The discount Dr. Doom's (basically take off Doom's cloak, slim him up a bit, and give him a more Iron Man vibe, and you got yourself a Doombot), actually started blasting at us with both orange Hercules energy, as well as solar blasts. Damn, he had two of the stones! Allyson thought on feet, and created a solar barrier around us, without looking like she was the one conjuring it up. Also, the Doombots that had yellow cores in their chests, were systematically starting to combust in violent golden flames, before clanging to the ground as scrap; that gave me an idea. I focused on creating storm clouds a few hundred feet above the school, and as soon as they collected enough voltage, I locked on to the Doombots, and zapped each of them with high voltage blasts. Some of them exploded, others kinda faltered, others (usually the Hercules powered ones) shrugged them off entirely. That bought the civilians enough time to realize that they should probably get to running, and flee through the corridors. Allyson held up the barrier, and as the Doombots started to bang against it repeatedly. We ran outside with the rest of the crowd, took a detour behind a wall, separating us from them, and after Allyson ditched her heels, and I gave her back her morpher, we morphed into our battle gear, and ran back into the school, not bothering to hide our streaks of lightning and sun.

"_Somebody wanna tell me what the hell's going on?!" _Grant asked as we dashed back into the school. "_Why would Doom attack a Christmas ball, unless he knew we were here, thus KNOWING who we are?!"_

"_The hell if I know, Super-G!" _I responded. "_But we gotta do damage control, we can't let the Doombots attack the civilians. Keep em' busy, and keep em' focused on us! We'll see what happens from there!"_

"_Look on the bright side," _Allyson thought to us as we got back in the action. "_At least we don't have to hold back!"_

Yeah, she was pissed, but then again, so was I.

I summoned my shield, let the edges up, and threw it through five Doombots who were trying to fly though the escape. I called it back, put it away, and created two Thunder Swords (lightning cuts metal better), as I reentered the gym. Grant summoned his axe, and we started slashing away at the orange ones together (Allyson straight up absorbed all the solar energy from the yellow ones). I'd like to say it was a little bit challenging, but it was just a repeat of the first day of training, easier even. Don't get me wrong, there were more than enough Doombots to go around, but between Allyson, Grant, and I, they were slashed, smashed, or depowered into scrap. No sooner than we disposed of the first wave, I could sense another (several hundred) rocketing from the sky. We could probably take them if they landed, but they had energy blasts, meaning it be way too hard to keep the home field advantage; I decided to end the fight entirely..

"Sunbird!" I called to her. "I know you can sense the ones with Sun Energy, make them go boom, i'll handle the rest!"

She nodded, and raised her hands to the sky; even from down here, I could hear the explosions. I followed suit, and summoned a massive lightning storm, using the air/Power Grid to lock on to the Doombots. I used a lot more voltage in my lightning strikes this time, and even if the first strike didn't blow them to bits, another bolt of lightning wasn't far behind to finish the job. All in all, the only Doombots that actually made it through the hole in the roof, were pieces of scrap.

"Oh come on guys," Grant playfully complained. "You could've let me have at least one of them!"

"Shut up," I told him. "They'll be plenty more chances to fight for our lives another day. I'm not trying to be snippy, but we just got ambushed for no apparent reason, like you said, Super-G, why would Doom do that if he didn't know who we are!?"

"You don't know that for sure." Allyson said, a small surge of fear creeping in her voice.

"Well unless a stone is somewhere in the building," I retorted. "There is absolutely no other justifiable…."

My voice trailed off, my Thunder Sense was pinging like crazy.. Something powerful, and fast was rocketing towards us like a dive bomber, and what was even worse, it's energy felt familiar to mine. Seriously, it was a few clicks off, kinda like the difference between Catholic and Baptist churches, but it's energy signature had the same type of vibe to it as my electricity. I saw it coming down from above, a big purple blob of electricity (not Goblin, that's an experience I never wanted to repeat again). From the looks of whatever it was, it was not slowing down, and was not in a talkative mood.

"_SUNBIRD!" _I roared in her head "_DELTA CANNON STRAIGHT UP!"_

We wasted no time getting set up, and fired a lightning/sun energy blast at the purple comet. The blast was strong, and actually gave the thing a run for it's money, as our blast started to slowly push it backwards; but that was before the comet cranked the dials up by a hundred, hurtling through the cannon so fast, we barely had time to get out of the way as it crashed into the floor Deep Impact style. I don't really remember much after that. Just falling, hitting my head multiple times against metal pipes, and being crushed under at least a ton of rubble (my body could barely take it, but my suit took most of the damage). After that, I was knocked out cold.

(Grant's Perspective)

I got up out from under the rubble, and quickly looked around for Sunbird and Storm-Lord. I didn't have to look hard for Sunbird, she was right next to me, glowing in her Sun Form, and also digging herself up from the rubble.

"_You ok, Sunbird?" _I thought to her, lending a helping hand.

"_Yeah," _she thought back to me. "_But where's Storm-Lord!?"_

We looked around for a bit, shifting through the rubble at super speed, and after what seemed like forever, found a familiar looking black hand, the battle suit hand that is, sticking out from under a large pile of metal and floorboards.

"_Oh God!" _Sunbird thought in a panic.

"_Don't freak out!" _I thought to her. "_Just help me get him free."_

It took about half a sec to get all of the rubble off of Jason, a task that would've been extremely delicate, had he not been wearing his extremely durable battlesuit. The guy wasn't in the best of conditions. His forehead had a nasty welt on it, he was out cold, but for a guy who was dropped through like five floors, he wasn't all that bad.

"_Don't worry, Sunbird," _I thought to her. "_He's ok, just needs a little bit to heal, let the voltage do it's thing."_

She breathed in relief, but I was on edge. This place was all too familiar, that purple lightning, while not Goblin's, was definitely recognizable. Before I could think to myself about blowing this wrecking site, my body called for a Timeout, and I was just barely on time to turn around, and bat away a huge sheet of surging metal. I knocked it over to the side, just barely missing Sunbird, and was surprised by how much that had hurt. I doubt the metal itself was the one causing me the pain, unless this place was reinforced with Adamantium or Vibranium pipes, but that weird electricity, that stung like a colony of fire ants having their way with my arm. I focused on the area in front of me, instructing Sunbird to put her guard up, and cautiously hovered forward. Before I could even get fifty feet forward. My body called for another Timeout, and I dodged a powerful streak of lightning, Sunbird too. That was the initial f*(# up for whoever that guy was, because for a slight moment, I saw him in the darkness, and I shot after him, hopefully faster than he could follow. I reeled back a fist, going for about 60% power, and missed. No seriously, he was in my sights, I had him served up and ready for a knuckle sandwich, but at the very last moment, my arm, and the rest of my body jerked to the side; the guy literally altered my flight path. I wish that was the worst of it, but he wasn't done there. A huge blast of lightning shot out of his hand, pelting me dead in the chest, and sending me so far back, I crashed through a few more pipes before landing hard on the floor. Again, I don't know what it was about this specific type of lightning that made me weak in the knees, I was just glad the battlesuit could take the hit, otherwise my body would've been going through hell.

I was dazed for a few seconds, and when I got up, my heart damn near crawled into my throat. Sunbird was in her Blazing Sun Form, lobbing blasts of fiery energy at….well there's no easy way to say it, f*(#!($ Magneto. To give credit where credit's due, the old geezer looked pretty badass. He was wearing a different variation of his classic red and purple suit, one that was all gleaming red/purple armor (without the underwear on the outside), his trademark helmet, and some type of chainmail covering his arms; hell, if I didn't know of the old man, i'd would've sworn he was Thor's father/ shopping buddy. Anyway, Sunbird was fighting Magneto, and for the most part, was having a bad time of it. Don't get me wrong, she was doing her best, dodging at least 3/5 blasts, melting the metal he threw at her, and getting some clever blasts, and hits with some small scale constructs in on him, but that seldom mattered. The guy was covered in and electromagnetic force field, and still was versatile enough to kick ass from inside his safe bubble, using the metal all around us to keep Sunbird off balance, and keep her from really focusing on fighting, rather than dodging. It didn't seem like he was all that interested in controlling her battlesuit, and yeah, I realize our Titanium/Iron/Steel suits are literally the worst things to have at this moment; however, Magneto was more than willing to use the wreckage around us, as his personal playthings. Sunbird blasted at him with a wave of golden fire, and when Magneto countered with his own wave of voltage, I made a move to get back in the game. I soared under the two blasts, summoned my axe, and with as much force as I could put into the strike without leveling the school, I smashed the axe on top of Magneto's barrier, shattering it like glass, and let myself be shot with him in Sunbird's blast. Now for those of you that are wondering how I managed to get the drop on Magneto with a metal axe, two words can easily explain it: Gravity Training. See, I didn't exactly make an effortless strike on Magneto's force field, in fact, bringing my axe down at all, was like defying earth's gravitational pull. However, I trained under 50X the earth's gravity, and maybe S.E.R.A. was trying taking advantage of my trusting nature when she said that I would only be able to survive half of Jupiter's gravity, because Jupiter's gravity is only 2.53X earth's; Jupiter would be a cakewalk compared to my training regimen. The point i'm trying to make here, is that while Magneto was putting up some resistance to my strikes, and while I had to be a lot more careful with my flying punches, Magneto would never be able to deflect one of my punches again, so long as I used enough strength to defy his magnetic powers. So yeah, I made him hurt for a while.

As we careened backwards together, I managed to grab a hold of him, flip him under me, and pound at his face relatively hard. Now before you get on me about punching and old man, keep in mind, this was Magneto, you couldn't think of him as just an old man, or else you'd end up on the wrong side of a sharp piece of metal. Besides, before I even punched the guy, the chainmail around his neck fastened into a face mask, plus the helmet was already blocking some of the already held back damage. I punched him maybe ten times, before he managed to get back in the game by kneeing me in the chest with way too much speed and power to be his own, and then blasting me into the air with another electromagnetic blast. Why did they hurt so much? Before I could move out of the way, I felt a large piece of metal hit me in the side of my head, which only managed to piss me off even more.

"_Sunbird!" _I called to her. "_Little help please!"_

She didn't answer back, but her actions spoke louder than words. In no time at all, Magneto got pelted in the face with a golden fiery fist.

"_Plans?" _she thought to me.

"_Other than punch/blast him really, really hard?" _I thought back to her. "_Nope, the area is way to small for any large scale constructs, we can't risk any major blasts that could level the school, plus our Delta Plays would be useless in such a tight area. Nah, looks like we're gonna have to settle this the old fashioned, 'hit him until he dosen't get back up again' technique."_

"_Works for me, let's get on with it!"_

Yikes, so glad it wasn't me that ruined her night.

Sunbird and I fought as hard as we could, without bringing the house down on top of us. Hell, if we actually went all out on this guy, he would've stood about the same chance against us, that a lion has against an elephant. As was such, he was kicking our asses pretty hard. Sunbird blasted him with a flurry of golden fireballs, small missile constructs, and a even managed to get some good shots in on Magneto, such as a nice combo of punches and kicks, but our problem always stemmed down to the same problem: too much metal. 3/5 times, the only thing I was punching or batting away, was a blob of metal, or a blast of electromagnetism. Don't get me wrong, there were times when Sunbird and I absolutely took the hurt to Magneto's ugly mug. For example, Sunbird got so pissed of playing the 5'Ds of Dodgeball, she released a massive solar wave that blew Magneto, and all of the metal in the immediate area, out of the way. We capitalized on that with a tag team beat down, which I had to admit, was a lot more fun than a sane person should've been having. We managed to dent his armor a little, and yes, i'm fully aware of the fact that I could've killed him with a sizeable swing to the chest with my axe, but again, killing a person is a bit higher on the don't list, than a hulking green death lord. So yeah, it seemed like we finally had the game on lock, but that would only last for a couple hundred more punches; at least the guy had quality armor. In a time frame of half a second, and I do mean a half second, Magneto raised a barrier around himself, stopping Sunbird and I from beating the hell out of him, and while we backtracked a little bit, he pelted the two of us with high powered electromagnetic bolts. I went crashing backwards, and so did Sunbird, and while the blast hurt like hell, I was more concerned about another thing. How the hell was everybody getting super speed. Seriously, at this point it wasn't even an advantage anymore, because everyone had it; F*(#! % HOW!? Still, things got even worse, while I was down, and quicker than Sunbird or I could recover, he shot up like a homing missile, and decked Sunbird in the face with a punch so hard, it knocked her right out of her Sun Form, made a huge boom that destabilized the basement area we were in even further, and knocked her out cold; honestly, if she wasn't in Sun Form, she probably would've had her head snapped.

That…...pisssed…...me…...off.

I rocketed into Magneto so fast, tackling him in the gut, roaring like a bear. Magneto tired punching me in the back, and even got a few knee shots to my gut; thanks to my armor, rage, and adrenaline, I didn't even feel them. I stopped his pointless struggle with a huge right uppercut, followed by a hard spinning kick, sending him crashing through a few hundred pounds of steel; I didn't stop, I couldn't let him recover. I shot at him again, this time with intent to beat him down DBZ style, but Magneto had other plans. He shot at me again with an electromagnetic bolt, but as my past few battles have dictated, a good swing of the axe is all it'll take to turn a bolt of lightning back at it's owner. Magneto went flying back again, this time hitting a wall, and just barely managed to duck out of the way, and swung at me with a hard right cross. I blocked the punch, smacked him across the face with a backhand, knocking away his helmet and chainmail mask. Magneto retaliated by blowing me away with a small explosive wave, and upon my immediate recovery, launched a volley of metal pipes, electromagnetic blasts, and a few clumps of metal. I quickly went into Blitz Extreme, weaved my way through the assault, and continued to pound Magneto to a pulp, or at least tried to. You see, if it was just his head, I could've knocked the old man out with a flick of my finger. However, he was protected by an electromagnetic body shield, which seemed to water down my already held back punches, I mean, I was hitting this guy in the face 100 times per second, and he was just taking it, and giving some back, which actually f*(#! % hurt. I didn't let on how much his punches actually stung, but based off of the way I was fighting, I was pretty sure Magneto at least thought he had me beat. He dodged one of my punches, missed an uppercut, but got me under the chin with a flying backflip, followed by a mid-air drop kick, that shot out another damn bolt of electromagnetism. I careened back about 50 meters, where Storm-Lord and Sunbird were still out cold no less, and just barely rolled of the way as Magneto tried to put me down for good. He basically fashioned a bunch of electromagnetism around his arms, fashioned like two long jagged sabers, and impaled the ground I was just lying on; that could've been my head!

Magneto swung at me with his arm sabers, and I summoned my axe to my left hand, my sword to my right. As I parried his sabers, I silently thanked Mrs. Kennedy for making them out of the most indestructible metals ever, because if they weren't, i'd be missing a head. I blocked his two strikes, and managed to get a good front kick off on Magneto's chest, sending him sprawling backwards. He tried charging me again, and boy did I make him suffer for it. He started twirling his sabers around, as if I could was thrown off by the speed; guys, I sparred with Nightcrawler and Storm-Lord, this guy was cake compared to those sons of mothers. He slashed at me with a crouching swipe, and a downwards stab, difficult to defend against, if I was an untrained smuck, that is. I batted his downward stab away with my axe, almost dislocating his arm, blocked his crouching swipe, and while he was open, thrusted my axe at his stomach, willing the blade to extend and stab him. Again, the guy had quality armor, because only the tip made it through, still, I stabbed an old man. I made an old man cry out in pain, and bleed through the hole in his armor; I am very not ok with that, no matter how necessary it was. Magneto fumbled back a little, but then resumed attacking me, as if his rage would change the outcome. He came at me with an inward slash from either end, and I gotta tell you, it wasn't even funny anymore, obviously this guy had the potential to fight good, but he was clouded in anger, making rookie mistakes; i'd know, I am a rookie. So yeah, before his sabers could hypothetically 'behead' me, I ducked while switching my weapons to reverse grips, stabbing them through his thighs, and then while he was recoiling in pain, brought them out of his legs, and put them through his biceps, actually twisting the blades a little bit. The idea was to immobilize him, make it so that he'd be in too much pain to use his powers; the premise of this plan would've probably worked, but I didn't take Magneto's anger into account, which is essentially forgetting to carry the 5 in a math problem.

"ENOUGH!" he roared through the pain, blowing me away with the mother of all blastwaves, tearing down almost half of the foundation of the school; hell, it was a wonder the thing was still standing.

There are some things you realize after a certain point. After a certain amount of living, you know, or at least have a rough idea of your sexuality, after a certain amount of TV, music, movies, books, etc., you know what your interests are. After getting smacked around by Magneto, I think it was safe to say that electromagnetic blasts could be added to my list of weaknesses, because that blast knocked me out cold for a good 30 seconds, before I came to. After which, I kinda wished I was unconscious again. Magneto had me, Sunbird, and Storm-Lord wrapped in metal pipes, surging with electromagnetism. I tried getting free, but it was just like in the vision. For all of my strength, I couldn't get out of some plumbing.

"Stop struggling, child," Magneto, who seemed to be looking for something, said. "What you are feeling now, is the magnetic polarity of every planet in the solar system, you won't be going anywhere."

"Is it to late to apologize for stabbing you?" I asked him, trying to stall what looked to be Delta Force's inevitable death. "Because if you're mad about that, I wanna point out that you started it."

Magneto paused to look at me.

"Child," he started. "This may come as a shock to you, but I am not particularly happy with you at the moment. For the sake of you and your playmates, i'd advise you to…."

His voice trailed off, his focus went somewhere else, and his head leaned to one side, as if something had caught his interest. To my right, about 30 meters away, a pile of metal started to clang and rumble like a volcano. I honestly didn't know what to expect, a monster, a robot, a monster robot? No, far from that. The metal pile exploded, scattering the metal everywhere, and in a small orb of electromagnetism, was a small green stone, shaped like a small tree, or broccoli, i'm still fuzzy on what Demeter wanted it to be. But yeah, holy $#!+ there was a stone here of all places. If I sound slightly unsurprised, it's because of the last few days, you don't just fight war mongers, undead armies, and serpent cosplayers, without learning to just go with the tidal wave. Magneto clenched the stone in his hand, and at first, looked like he was gonna take it, and leave us in peace, but then his communicator, embedded in his armor gauntlets, went off.

"Speak," he plainly said.

"Magneto," said a sneering, cruel voice. "You have it?"

"Yes," Magneto responded. "I shall teleport-"

"Where are the children?"

"They have been dealt with, incapacitated, they are no threat-"

"Kill them."

Ok, that was kinda harsh. Don't get me wrong, I understood what was going on completely. Doom, obviously that was Doom, wanted us out of the way, we had f*(#% with his plans too long, and even though I understood his motives, apparently Magneto didn't. Looking at that old man's face, I could tell that killing teenagers, not children, was not on the top of his want to do list.

"Doom," he pleaded. "They are my own, they are young, they are defeated, there is no-"

"Do as I have ordered," Doom said calmly. "Lest your own, not be included in the number of my kingdom."

Didn't know what the hell that meant, but it obviously registered on some level with Magneto. He hung his head for half a second, and quickly recomposed himself.

"Understood," he said to Doom, and I felt myself being hoisted up in thin air.

Hundreds of metal pipes hovered in mid-air, and after a flash of purple lightning, they were all sharp, jagged, makeshift spears, enough to kill Storm-Lord and Sunbird, if it was a headshot, but definitely not enough to kill me. No, that didn't make the situation better for me, I didn't wanna watch my friends die, i'd rather take the pain myself. Besides, i've been here before, the Norn-Fates showed me this, and just like the vision, my own axe was being leveled somewhere in between my sternum; yikes! I tried desperately to move, to get free, struggling with all my might, but it was no good, I was a sitting duck, and so were my friends.

"Please understand," Magneto said solemnly. "The survival of our race rests in the balance. Take comfort in the fact that your sacrifices will ensure the new era of Homo Superior."

Magneto thrusted his hands towards me and my friends, and the death rain of metal soared at us. If my body didn't automatically call for a Timeout, our deaths would've come in less than a second.


	15. Chapter 15: I AM GEO-TITAN!

**Chapter 15: I AM GEO-TITAN!**

Like I said, our deaths should've been as fast, and as effortless as blinking. But my damned body put me in Timeout. I tired to take advantage of the situation, and struggled against my bonds, desperately trying to break free. I strained, and groaned, and roared, trying with every ounce of my being to escape; I probably struggled for like two minutes straight, from my perspective. After all of my huffing and puffing was over, I gave up, done with the pointless struggle. Yet, even in the face of what was sure to be my death, I suddenly realized something; time was still frozen. It didn't occur to me at first, but after re-assessing the situation, I realized that for whatever reason, I wasn't in Timeout; things slow down when i'm in Timeout. Now, everything was frozen, like God had hit the pause button on my life; hopefully he was considering pressing the rewind button as well. For a few seconds, nothing happened, just me, my friends, and a mutant terrorist/freedom fighter, all frozen in time together; then the green spark appeared. It was bright, but fast, almost like it didn't exist. But then came another, and another, and another, until it turned into a straight up green inferno. I honestly didn't know what to think of it, on one hand, it could be a good guy, here to spring me; on the other hand, it could be another surprise enemy, here to conquer the world with an army of demon Care Bears. The blaze burned bright for a good few seconds, and I was surprised by how much it didn't burn, how it felt more like a distant strengthening sensation. The blaze suddenly took the form of a small vortex, and after a few more seconds, materialized arms, legs, and the rough shape of a female. The blaze gradually cooled down, and once the blaze had dissipated, I was left with the company of…Gabrielle Union!? I'm not joking guys, Gabrielle Union, as in, Gabrielle Union the movie star, model, and wife of D Wade, was floating just five feet away from me. She was wearing a simple dark green dress, that matched her chocolate skin beautifully. Her long hair was in curls that reached down to her shoulders, and had a few green streaks in them. She wore a light shade of red eyeliner, red lipstick, and even had her nails done dark red. She stared at me for a good 30 seconds, her beautiful brown eyes boring into me. She didn't say anything as she studied me, she just maintained an odd expression, one that was a combination of intrigue, slight disappointment, and a little bit of happiness mixed in. I had no idea what this was all about, but as Gabrielle started to float closer to me, the less my brain started to care; hell, my attention had moved to a more southern location, if you catch my drift. Gabrielle, cupped my face in her hands, and started turning it to either side. Her face went into a different type of concentration, like she was examining an item on a shelf, not sure about whether or not she wanted it. She examined me for about ten seconds, if seconds still apply to frozen time, let go of my face, and turned her back on me, floating away from me slowly. She stopped just a few feet away from Magneto, paused for a moment, and then let out a deep sigh, that sounded like a blast of wind.

"_You are not making this easy for me, child_." she said; and good God, her voice!

It was definitely Gabrielle's voice, but it was like someone remixed it with what I assume to be, was the female version of God. She was primal, ancient, OP for lack of better term, and definitely not Gabrielle Union.

"_Seriously, the first legitimate candidate for my champion in a millennium, and this is the state I find you in? The real frustration is that you are not a complete failure, you have raw talent, and tons of potential, yet here you are, on the brink of death."_

"Not to be rude, Ms. Union, or Mrs. Wade, if you wanna go by that," I responded, still trying to get over that reality defying voice. "But why the hell are you here, why do you sound like pure godliness, and what's with this whole champion thing?"

She turned around, her eyes now blazing with emerald green fire, and raised her right hand. Out of the ground, or should I say using the ground, she created an elaborate stone made throne, and popped a squat just under the dangerous metal projectiles still on a direct collision course with me and my friends.

"_Come on, Grant!" _she addressed me the way a mother addresses her child. "_I know you to be smarter than that. Who am I?"_

"Obviously not Gabrielle Union," I responded.

"_Well, at least we're getting closer to solving the mystery. If you are interested by the form I have chosen, it's because I always take the form of a mortal, when I address humans. Usually, I address them as the same ethnic origin, but you are a special case. By the way, thanks for holding the image of this mortal woman in such high esteem. Her body is divine, I actually think i'll keep this form."_

"Glad to help random, mysterious, magic lady, but seriously, who/what are you?"

She smiled at me, like I was a cute puppy chasing it's own tail.

"_I'll give you a hint. _she said. '_Titan of the Earth, Champion of….?"_

"Gaea!" I spat out. "As in, Earth Mother Gaea, you actually exist!"

"_Grant!" _Gaea retorted, putting on a fake pouty face. "_You're gonna break my heart! I bet if it was Thor that was rescuing you, you wouldn't be so rude!"_

"You're right," I said, deciding to turn on my manners for the nice, extremely hot, Earth Mother. "Sorry, it's just been a rough few days, what with the magic rocks, mutant powers, and at this point, I had thought i'd seen it all. So, um, what do you want?"

"_I'm glad you asked," _Gaea said, abandoning her throne, and floating towards me again. "_I was going to tell you regardless, but i'm glad you asked; it implies that you have courtesy. Usually, i'd drone on and on for ten minutes about who I am, but thanks to your mortal device known as the internet, you can just 'Google' me, as they say."_

"As long as it's not Wikipedia," I responded.

"_No, definitely not," _Gaea responded. "_But that is beside the point, focus. Grant, long story short, i'm in danger, the earth is in danger, the scattering of the Stones of Olympus is only a herald of greater dangers to come, and I fear that without a champion to protect me, the whole of the earth that is, I will be destroyed."_

"Ok," I responded, kinda getting the drift of where this was going. "But, a couple quick questions. Why me? Why not people like Hulk, or Thor? And why now? Lady, do you realize that you left me to die just barely a day ago?"

Gaea's eyes flashed dangerously, and for a moment, I thought she was gonna off me right then. Thankfully, she calmed down, recomposed herself, and answered me in a calm, and respectable manner; also, I was only just able to keep myself from not straight voiding my bowels.

"_Why you?" _she answered me. "_Don't kid yourself, it wasn't like I hand chose you, it was kind of a 'luck of the draw' type thing. Basically, everything born of this earth, is born with a small connection to me. In your case, you have twice as much of a connection to me; the mark of my champion. It dosen't happen of my choosing, a fact that I find extremely frustrating, but as far as candidates go, you are not the worst I could do; I mean, it's not every few thousand years that my champion just so happens to be the tenth great grandson of Hercules."_

"WHAT!?" I shouted.

"_No interruptions!" _Gaea shushed me_. "But yes, Grant, you are indeed the tenth generation descendant of Hercules' most recent bloodline. The family gift diminished over the course of five generations, up to the point to where the children were only just stronger than most of the average humans, but your connection to me, plus your mutant ability of super strength, well, it made you more than what you should have been."_

"What do you mean 'should have been'?"

"_By mortal standards, you should have been classified as a Gamma level mutant, one of the weaker ones, but your connection to me, plus your divine lineage, made you Omega level; even I am almost proud of what you are."_

"Ok," I responded, just starting to get a handle on whatever the hell this was. "We got the whole aspect of 'why' taken care of, but there's still one more nagging question that just won't let me be."

"_Why I chose not to save you in your moments of need?" _Gaea asked me, her face kinda portraying guilt, but mixed with a willful unapologetic mask. "_Let me counteract that statement, I mean, i've been protecting you from the sidelines for quite a few days now. For one, do you think you just SPONTANEOUSLY developed the strength to lift a 90,000 ton warship? No, your tenacity impressed me so much, that I willed your strength to increase for that time being. When the fool known as the Green Goblin nearly killed your friends, when his energy blast exploded prematurely-"_

"That was you."

"_Yes, I sensed how much you cared for the mortals, plus they're just important in the upcoming struggle, so it was in my best interest to keep them alive. As for why I didn't save you from Goblin? Grant, understand that you were never meant to even know who you were, until your 20th birthday, the fact that I am even speaking with you so soon, is dangerous; you're too young, too inexperienced. But it seems as though you are almost incapable of surviving on your own, you will just have to learn on the job; I mean, do you know how much energy it has taken me to stop time like this, I haven't had all of my essence in one place like this, since the dawn of time!_

"Sorry to make you go through so much trouble, it's not like I asked you to save me! Hell, you didn't seem to have a problem with letting Goblin run me through!"

"_BE SILENT! You think I'm here for you, you think your life matters to me on a personal level!? You are my champion, Grant! Little more than a knight on a chessboard! I need you, I can't let you die, not yet, not while my very existence is at stake! Like it or not Grant, we need each other, so don't you dare get sentimental on me!"_

I was completely numb. My emotions were so high with rage, disgust, and straight up disbelief that a person could be so uncaring for those around her, that I literally couldn't process the feelings at one time.

"You don't care about me," I calmly said. "You don't care about my friends, it's all you isn't it? As long as queen dirt-on-my-shoe gets her's, then everyone else can shove it, right? So why should I team up with you? Why the holy f*(# should I even consider being your champion?"

"_Here's a bit of incentive," _Gaea said, getting in my face, and maintaining a smile that reeked of sarcastic venom. "_Because right now, you are about to die; do you understand that? In fact, let's forget about you, you're so much of a hero wannabe, you probably care more about your friends, and about the countless citizens that will perish in Doctor Doom's mad scramble for power, don't you, boy? So here's your two choices. Join with me,and become my champion, or let you and your friends, the only hope the world has for survival, die."_

Damn. She had be by the balls with that one; whether I liked her or not, Gabrielle Union aka Gaea, was my only chance to survive, my only chance to protect my friends.

"Not much of a choice when you put it like that," I said.

"_No," _Gaea said plainly. "_Not much of a choice at all; so, are you game?"_

"Let's play."

She grabbed my face, with a grip that could crush steel. Her body combusted into fire, that formed a contained vortex around my body, and her voice was magnified in my mind, like a million Clemson fans.

"GRANT ULYSSES JACKSON! I, GAEA, MOTHER EARTH, ACCEPT YOU TO BE MY CHAMPION! TO PROTECT, SERVE, AND WIELD THE POWER OF THE EARTH ITSELF! DO YOU ACCEPT THE POWER, AND ALL THAT IT ENTITLES; WILL YOU BECOME THE TITAN OF THE EARTH!?"

"YEAH, SURE, WHATEVER!" I screamed aloud.

The flames around me swirled a lot faster, condensed into the fiery form of a woman, and quite literally flew down my throat. What happened next, was just straight up brutal. It was as if I was ingesting an ocean of fire and lightning. Power roared through my body in a continuous stream, and didn't f*(#! % stop! The pain was unbearable, almost reminded me of when Dragon Empress had me trapped in hellfire, yet at the same time, the power felt good in the way swallowing a lump of food that move slowly down your throat feels good; don't ask, sometimes I forget to chew enough times before swallowing. After what felt like an eternity of swallowing the Gaea, I finally hit that limit, that soothing limit of energy that my body could withstand, and it finally came out. It wasn't voluntary, no definitely not, but all of a sudden, my body blazed with an aura of green fire, while at the same time, surging with green lightning; it was kind of a weird blend, not fully one or the other. Anyway, I released a huge shock wave of the energy, and let me tell you something; I brought the house down! For starters, I knocked Magneto though a good few walls, which broke his concentration, and lossened my bonds just enough for me to break free.I quickly caught Sunbird and Storm-Lord, ripping away their bonds as well, and then took a quick nanosec to survey the area. I didn't know how I knew it, but my blastwave had destroyed the schools foundations; the basement was on the verge of giving way, bringing the school down on top of us. Sunbird and Storm-Lord were still out cold, and were in no condition to help me take Magneto down, so my first priority was to teleport them back to the Helicarrier. However, before I got to doing that, something caught my eye. A green glow, just under a small pile of metal caught my attention. When I dug through it, I was relieved to see that it was the stone of Demeter; thank God my blastwave was strong enough to knock Magneto away from it. I quickly summoned a canister, put the stone inside of it, and put it in Storm-Lord's hand, before pressing both his, and Sunbird's teleportation buttons. After I watched them vanish, I flew through the hole that I launched Magneto through, and with half a second to spare, made it out before the school dropped a good hundred feet. Honestly, I do realize that it was probably smarter if I had warped away with my friends, but there was a reason I didn't. For starters, Magneto had just kicked all of our asses, and I wanted some payback. However, I also thought about the other party goers, and what would happen if Magneto decided to take them hostage, in exchange for the stone. Also, from a tactical perspective, it made more sense to take Magneto out of the fight, and take away another huge player from Team Doom; so yeah, I went full throttle lookin' for his punk ass.

Luckily, it didn't take to long. I found him smack dab in the middle of the school's football field; actually flying through the giant hole he blew through the home side's bleachers. Now, I blasted Magneto a hell of alot backwards, and I imagine slamming into a metal wall, plus a face plant to the field, had to hurt, and at least keep you out of it for a good minute or so. Needless to say, I was completely shocked when Magneto started hurling bolts of electromagnetism at me, almost to where I didn't deflect them. Don't worry, I overcame the initial shock, and deflected all five of his bolts with my axe. On the sixth shot, I tapped into Blitz, and hit his blast back at him, although he quickly dodged it by flying backwards. He thrusted his hands to the side, and I felt something….well, I guess felt something hit me in the back, but it didn't hurt; didn't even have the force to move me. I saw pieces of the bleachers crash to the ground, and realized I had shrugged off at least a ton of metal like it was pillow foam; that was kinda cool. I quickly flew to the fifty meter mark, the same distance from Magneto, and when I hit the ground…oh my God! It was like landing in a field of pure adrenaline and power. I felt like I could lift a skyscraper like it was a baseball bat, kick a forklift across the Atlantic Ocean, and I was too busy reveling in my new strength, I almost got pelted in the chest with one of Magneto's blasts. I went into Timeout, and on a reflex/hunch, I raised my fists over my face, and imagined the energy coursing through me making a barrier around myself. Immediately, a green barrier, which was both fire and lightning, wrapped around me, and completely tanked Magneto's blast. Before he could try that again, and without dropping my barrier, I slammed my fist into the ground, and a green lightning/firebolt erupted out of the ground just under Magneto, and blasted him a good 50 feet in the air. I quickly rearranged the energy to take the form of two massive green fists, which was easier than rolling clay into a ball, and slammed Magneto back to the ground. I was getting hyped up, carried away, but i'll be damned if it didn't feel good! I created another giant hand construct, just behind Magneto, willed it to backhand Magneto towards me at the speed of a bullet, and as soon as he was in range, I reeled a fist back, charged it with ten grenades worth of the weird green energy, and knocked Magneto in the face, sending him careening into a field goal post, denting the base heavily. Besides the fact that I had just ruined a perfectly good piece of sports equipment, I was overjoyed; no, not with the thought of hurting Magneto, at least that wasn't the sole reason, but because I had energy powers now! No more could jerks like Magneto push me around just because I couldn't shoot lightning out of my hands; now, I had the strength of an entire planet to use!

"_Having fun?" _Gaea thought in my head, actually slowing down time to talk to me.

"_Huh?" _I thought back to her. "_Oh, right, sorry, guess I just got excited."_

"_No, do not apologize, Grant. It is good to see that you respond to power so well. It is called the Geo-Force, the literal manifestation of my power and being. Through it you can accomplish much, just remember, the power comes from the earth, not from yourself, when you call on it, imagine it as if you are the water hose that channels the water from the hydrant."_

"_Is that all?"_

"_Hmmm…...oh right! The electromagnetism, try not to get hit with that, it distorts your molecular structure, which is very much tied to me, too much of it, and it'll kill you."_

"_Good to know."_

I consciously cut off the conversation, and stood tall, as I prepared to face Magneto.

"Alright, Magneto!" I said, using the Geo-Force to amplify my voice. "Stand down! You got lucky a while back, but as you can see, i've got a few new tricks up my sleeve! Give up now, and nobody needs to get hurt!"

"THE STONE!" he bellowed at me, completely ignoring my generous offer to not kick his ass. "WHERE IS THE STONE, YOU INSUFFERABLE BOY!?"

"Long gone! Back at HQ with my friends, who you treated with such tender love and care!"

He was losing it; I could literally see his face cringing with pain and worry.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!" he kept yelling at me. "DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEFYING?! DOOM MAY BE MAD, BUT HE IS ON THE VERGE OF RULING THIS WORLD, A WORLD WHERE OUR PEOPLE WOULD FINALLY BE ABLE TO LIVE WITHOUT FEAR! BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, YOU HAVE PUT OUR RACE ON THE ROAD TO EXTINCTION! I WAS TRYING TO SAVE US ALL!"

"So was I, dude!" I responded. "I'm a superhero, it's my job to save the world, that means everyone! Look, if Doom's threatening us, you should be teaming up with me, I know you've been on the right side of the law before. Work with us, and we can take him down together, maybe even give the mutants a bit more good press!"

Magneto stared me down, his eyes not resembling anything related to diplomacy and/or rationality. He slowly shook his head, rose into the air, and engulfed himself in a huge surge of electromagnetism.

"YOU, BOY!" he bellowed at me again. "MAY BE THE REASON FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR RACE! WITHOUT THE STONE, I HAVE BUT ONE CONSOLATION PRIZE TO OFFER DOOM; YOUR HEAD! I AM GOING TO KILL YOU, BOY, THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT I WILL TAKE PLEASURE IN IT NOW!

I willed the Geo-Force to manefit around me in a kick-ass body shield; seriously, the lightning/fire fusion looked awesome!

"IF THAT'S HOW YOU WANNA PLAY IT," I roared at Magneto. "THEN LET'S GO!"

I launched at him, now completely willing and able to beat an old man senseless; that sounded a lot less psychotic in my head.

Magneto blasted at me with more of his bolts, but I created a charging bus construct, and sent it ramming though the bolts, and into Magneto, sending the old coot flying back a good few hundred meters. He managed to recover, but only just in time to take a hard right punch across the face. To give credit where it's due, he took it like a champ. Maybe it was the electromagnetic body shield, or maybe his armor was really, really strong, but he took a punch strong enough to level a bus, and still nearly got me under the chin with a retaliation uppercut. I managed to move out of the way, blocked one of his punches, and kicked him dead in his chest. As Magneto flew backwards, I rocketed after him, and assaulted him with a furious punch and kick combo; denting his armor a few times in the process. At first, it seemed like Magneto was just that bad of a fighter, I mean, just a few minutes ago he was able to keep up with me just barely, but then my body called for a Timeout, and I understood why he was lending his body to be my punching bag. Just behind me, at the speed of bullets, large chunks of the home and visitors bleachers, were flying smack dab into me. To make matters worse, Magneto suddenly remembered how fast he was, and blasted me in the chest with a bolt of electromagnetism, sending me careening through at least ten sheets of metal. I crashed into the ground, leaving a decent crater in the center of the football field, and just barely had time to raise a barrier over myself, as Magneto unleashed electromagnetic hell on the stadium. He hit me with a Kamehameha of electromagnetism, which I was just barely able to hold off with my shield. Tendrils of stray lightning split from the blast, going in every direction, and carving trenches in the football field; the damn place looked more like a battlefield than a football field, which I guess it was now. Magneto didn't stop there, and while simultaneously upping the voltage, bombarded my barrier with lobs of metal; it was all I could do to keep my barrier from getting smashed like glass, using more and more of the Geo-Force to keep it up.

"_You are not very good at this." _said Gaea.

Man, where was the block number function in my head?

"_Oh yeah?!" _I retorted. "_Well thanks for the commentary, it's not at all distracting! Besides, what the hell do you want me to do?!"_

"_Deflect the metal."_

"_WHAT!?"_

"_Don't yell. But yes, Grant, you can manipulate metal, just like your charming friend. You see, aside from the power of the earth's energy, you have the ability to manipulate any earth, or earth based element. Metal? Just ore in a different form. It takes a significant amount of the Geo-Force, not to mention intense concentration, to use this ability, but you can do it."_

"_And you didn't share this information before…"_

"_You weren't strong enough! In fact, you're barely strong enough now! Using my power is not for the faint of heart, Grant. Using it will puts enormous strain on your body. Sure, it's basically the same as working out, the more you use it, the stronger, faster, and more durable you become, but I can't let you overuse it, you have to take it in gradual doses."_

"_Ok, I get that, but back to the metal bending thing. How am I supposed to use it, if I have absolutely no idea how to?"_

"_Do you trust me?"_

"_Not really, no."_

"_Well let me try something anyway, it's the only way I can help you master a an extremely difficult skill, that takes hours upon hours of practice, in the span of about ten seconds."_

"_Fair enough, gimme your best shot."_

My body shut down for a little bit. Seriously, it was like someone had hit the off switch on my legs and arms, and I crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Gaea must've been keeping up the barrier for me, because as I was on the ground twitching, feeling like someone had injected liquid nitrogen into my veins, I noticed how I wasn't dying from Magneto's consistent rage quit. After my spazzing had passed, leaving me with an empty, yet at the same time, extremely filling feeling, I noticed something different about…well everything. You know how you can kinda feel fog in the sense that you feel a phantom pain? Well, imagine that, but a hundred times the feels. As I looked around at the lobs of metal still bashing repeatedly against my barrier, I was in Blitz Extreme by the way, I could feel them, I could see the ore elements in them, like green radar blips. I held my hand out, focusing my attention on a piece of metal that either looked like a disembodied bleacher, or a lump of safety rails. I rotated my wrist, focusing on making the metal lob rotate. Gaea was right, doing this took some effort, like lifting 100 pounds with one hand, for me that is, but as the metal spun like a top, I couldn't help but smile; Magneto was in for such a rude awakening. I closed my eyes, held out my hands, and concentrated on every last piece of metal in the air. The feedback was straight up deadly, like asking for a bullet, but getting a missile instead. As I focused on harnessing the energy, and making it obey me, I felt the same way I did when I lifted 50,000 tons for the first time after the battle with Venom; not completely out of my league, but definitely getting into dangerous waters.

"_Careful." _Gaea warned me. "_You still need time to adjust to the strain."_

"_You don't make the big times by being careful," _I thought back to her. "_Besides, if it were easy, everyone would do it."_

With a roar of resolve, I thrusted my hands towards Magneto, and before he was even aware of what was going on, a hundred sheets of metal decked him in an assembly line of pain. Again, maybe it was the armor, or maybe Magneto was tougher than I thought, but Magneto took that barrage like a champ. He barely moved, and didn't even looked like he was fazed by my ability to control metal; then again, he had repaired his armor, and his face was once again covered in his full body chainmail under layer, and was probably displaying a perfect mix of anger and fear. Still, I had no intention of letting him get his balance back again. I held out my hands again, regaining my control over the metal, and commanded them to smash into Magneto again, and again, making them surge with Geo-Force to get that extra kick. This time, Magneto actually got tossed around. Every time a slab of metal smacked into him, a small tangent of energy discharged like a grenade. Hell, I probably could've knocked Magneto down for the count on this trick alone, but where's the fun in that? On something that was an odd mix between anger, a hunch, and straight up impulsiveness, I balled my fists, and…...well, the metal copied me. Seriously, I don't know how I did it, but all of a sudden, the one hundred sheets of metal, quickly merged into about ten metal fists, each about the size of a jackhammer. The effort definitely put a strain on my body, I could feel that in my chest, but I didn't care; the sooner I finished this fight, the sooner I could take a breather. I noticed a small tug on my fists, like someone was trying to pull them away from me. I looked up, and saw Magneto desperately trying to manipulate my metal constructs, straining with all of his feeble might. I decided to cut him a break, and let him have one of my fists; to the face that is! As he was sputtering in the air, I unleashed the beast on him. From every angle, metal fists surging with Geo-Force decked into every part of him they could reach. One hit him dead in the face, others hit the chest and back; hell, others actually hit his kneecaps and face, so i'm almost certain that his armor had to be some type of reinforced titanium, because with all of the abuse I was giving him, this guy should've been seriously messed up. I was able to continue my barrage unchallenged for about 15 seconds. After that, Magneto kinda got back in the game; in a technical sort of way. He managed to raise an electromagnetic barrier around him, and for a while, my metal fists bounced harmlessly off of it's surface. Still, I wasn't stupid, if experience had taught me anything, it was better to get one big hit, than a thousand little ones. I kept up the barrage, fooling Magneto into a sense of security, and while subtly moving most of my fists behind his line of sight, I willed them to form together in a massive lump, and take the form of a massive missile, powered with an insane amount of Geo-Force. By the way, I don't know how I did it, or if it was just an automatic thing, but as the metal formed the missile construct, they basically melted into a liquid state in less than a second, merged together, took the shape of a missile, and then hardened to it's original state; it was like some Terminator 2 $#!+. So yeah, I think you can predict what happened next, I yanked my arms back, and the missile took off full steam into Magneto's barrier. The explosion was so big, it would've completely incinerated the bleachers if Magneto didn't already scrap them. As was such, the heat from the missile explosion lit up the sky, half melted the field goal post on farther side, and sent Magneto falling to the earth. I tapped into Blitz for two reasons. Number one: This mother f*(#% wasn't dead; I mean, I wasn't TRYING to kill him, but from the look of that explosion, he should've been burnt toast. Number two: The explosion was way too big, and way too close to the school; in other words, this fight needed to hit the road five minutes ago. As Magneto careened towards the ground, I got an idea, but first, let me explain something. I'm a superhero fanboy. On the scale of top three things that matters to me it's, in this order: football, food, and then superheroes; so please forgive me if my constructs seem a little….Avengerish. I covered myself in a thick layer of Geo-Force, imagined it taking the form of an Iron Man suit, and took to the air, delivering a massive punch to Magneto's face, sending him soaring sideways away from the school.

"_Iron Man?" _Gaea asked me. "_Seriously?"_

"_Hey!" _I retorted while punching Magneto about a quarter mile forward. "_It's stylish and functional, just watch!"_

By the way, yes, my body constructs were actually useful. Other than the fact that the armor was basically the same as wrapping myself in another layer of titanium armor, it increased my punching strength by three times, and if I willed it, I could make the suit work like Iron Man's. For example, after I punched Magneto another quarter mile forward, the guy finally managed to recover, and try to get some hits in. After dodging all of his blasts, I willed my shoulder compartments to shoot out 100 mini missiles, and even though Magneto blocked it with a wall of electromagnetism, the explosion was still strong enough to knock him back a good hundred feet. Even better, the explosion created a small, but nearly blinding burst of energy, meaning Magneto wouldn't see my next attack coming. I sensed him, that is to say sensed his armor, which for some reason I couldn't control, and once locked on, blasted him with the mother of all Unibeam cannons, completely engulfing him in the violent energy blast. Magneto quite literally rocketed into the distance, actually making me try to catch up with him; note to self, learn my own strength. Right before I was in grabbing distance however, the old man recovered with a backflip kick, lightning up the bottom of my construct helmet with a electromagnetic lightning kick, guy must've seen Storm-Lord in action, and blasted me in the chest with an electromagnetic Kamehameha. Gaea was right about the bad outcome of mixing Geo-Force with electromagnetism. I mean, I put a decent amount of energy into this suit, and it just barely managed to hold up against a blast that i'm sure Magneto didn't even give his all on. He followed up his lovetap with another Kamehameha, this one a lot bigger, and more destructive. On a reflex, I recycled the leftover energy from my Iron Man suit construct, filled it with a $#!+ ton of extra Geo-Force, and created a big green Captain America shield, couldn't do the stripes, but managed to get the star right, in front of Magneto's blast. The struggle could not get any more real. Imagine trying to hold off a point blank blast of water from a fire hose with only a trash can lid; if you multiply that by about 50 times, then you might get an idea of how hard it was to not get destroyed by Magneto's Big Bang Kamehameha. The electromagnetism kept corroding my shield, meaning I had to constantly spoon feed it Geo-Force just to make sure it barely held together. Magneto had me pinned down for a good ten seconds, and it was screwing me from both ends. On one hand, the effort of keeping my shield intact, kept me forever on defense; on the other hand keeping the shield up was killing my body, like someone had dropped a skyscraper on top of me, and didn't plan on taking it off. Five more seconds went by, and as my chest started to feel more and more like a lead mine, I got an idea. While keeping my shield intact, I willed it to be pushed back gradually, up to the point where it was almost pressed against my face, and when it seemed like Magneto had the clear upper hand, I quickly filled my shield with an overkill amount of Geo-Force, G-Force for short, curled up, and drop kicked the construct with everything I had; the shield ripped though Magneto's blast so fast, he didn't have time to dodge it, as he was smacked into the distance. I took a nanosec to breathe, before soaring after Magneto once again; right before I caught him, he flew back a little further, managing to recover, and after a turning feeling in my gut, I realized something I should've caught on to since forever ago.

You know that feeling you get right before you trip and fall, but miraculously catch yourself, saving you either a lot of pain, humiliation, or both? Well, remember when I said that I could sense all of the metal around me? You see, the thing about duking it out over a freeway, is that the amount of metal cars are so many, you kinda forget they're there; kinda like a background noise you eventually manage to drown out with your own thoughts. The point i'm trying to make, is that Magneto almost pulled a fast one on me, and as I sensed a BMW being lifted ever so gently off of the ground, I used my own metal manipulation powers to trump his, keep the car on the ground, and tap into Blitz, to give Magneto one hell of a telling off.

"NO! YOU! DON'T!" I roared at him, as I delivered three powerful cross punches to the old man's face, denting his helmet in the process.

As I delivered the attack, I was shocked at how unhinged I was for the small span of time I almost cut lose on this old man. Maybe it was because of the fight with Goblin, and how I failed to keep the collateral to a minimum, maybe it was thought of failing to keep a family safe from a battle that didn't concern them. Either way, Magneto was putting innocents in danger, and wasn't giving two $#!+$ about it; he was gonna learn some manners. I managed to hit him one more time in the face, before he blocked one aimed at his gut, lit up my arm with a surge of electromagnetism, and tired to bat me away with an electromagnetically charged backhand. My body called for a Timeout, and I took full advantage of it. I lit my own body ablaze with G-Force, essentially turning myself into the green Human Torch with a bonus of lightning, by the way, i'm not really gonna name my Geo-Force powers, they're pretty self explanatory. Anyway, I caught Magneto's backhand, my blazing armor holding up nicely against the electromagnetism, and headbutted him hard. That was enough to knock the old man off balance, and I socked him hard in the face, before flying after him. Again, Magneto was quick on the recovery, and even managed to engulf himself in a massive electromagnetic surge, before counter attacking me. We went at it for a good minute or so, punching, and kicking each other in a furious succession. I'll give it to the old geezer, he could really throw down. Even with my two days of Kung-Fu training, I was only barely able to block, and counter him; hell, my speed was more of an asset to me than my strength. Over the course of our brawl, we both got in some really good shots to the face, chest, gut, and even the arms and legs. Magneto managed to pull the rug out from under me, and assaulted me with a huge beat down of probably 100 punches per second; kinda slow compared to me, but still fast enough to where I was the one on the defensive. I managed to turn the situation around by blocking one of his strikes, quickly followed by a hard knee to the chest, and using the hand I still had a grip on, I spun Magneto around a few times, and let him go flying to wherever. This time, when I caught up to him, Magneto was helpless as I assaulted him with a furious punch and kick combo, followed by a hard punch to the gut, a backflip kick under the chin, and a hard drop kick, that…..didn't really do much. Don't get me wrong, I put a good amount of force into that kick, the guy should've been careening into the Atlantic Ocean, but as my feet made contact with his chest…..I dunno, it was like he had gained another few sets of armor in a millisecond. Still, the fun was only beginning. Like I said, I put a good bit of myself into that dropkick, and I wasn't planning on Magneto to be able to just take it; so you'll have to forgive me, if I ended up taking a huge electromagnetic blast, that sent me tumbling into the freeway.

Luckily, I didn't land on any cars, and I managed to get up, and back into the air fast enough to where nobody ran over me; but that didn't exactly solve all of my problems. For the split second that I was out, and not paying attention, Magneto had managed to lift 30 cars into the air, and hurled them all at me. Again, I was gonna make him pay for messing with innocents, but for now, the innocents were my only priority. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, using the Geo-Force to boost my speed, it wasn't hard to get the hang of, and caught each one of the cars, and put them down in some piece of abandoned land, that looked like it was, or could've been used as farming ground; hopefully the people wouldn't get too mad about me causing them a light delay in their travel plans, I mean not to brag, but I did just SAVE THEIR LIVES! I quickly flew back to Magneto, who was in the act of levitating a good 20 more cars. I quickly used my powers to shut him down, although doing so really took a chunk out of my energy. Still, I managed to create a giant G-Fist construct, I swear the name was accidental, and decked Magneto in the side. He got knocked back a good 100 meters; barely a quarter of the distance he should've been launched. I cupped my hands together, put as much G-Force into the construct as I could manage without hurting myself, and launched Magneto a good half a mile into the air, by hitting him from below with a Donkey Kong construct that mimicked my hammer uppercut. While Magneto was flying upwards, I trapped him in a G-Sphere, which is basically the green version of Sunbird's mini suns; and you know what? Regarding my statement about not naming my attacks? Scratch that, it's just who I am. As Magneto was burning/electrocuting in my G-Sphere, a feat that was kinda hard to keep up, what with him trying to escape from the inside and all, I did a full area scan. Using the Geo-Force, I sensed the area for a small, temporary fighting ground, one free of civilians or bystanders; hell, I would've used that spare land, but I had already put a handful of people in that area. Still, I managed to find an honest to God Metro Train Yard, completely empty of people. I could practically see the headlines, bad press, and the ten minute lecture Fury was gonna give me for doing this, but I needed a place to move this fight; just until I could either K.O. Magneto, or move it somewhere else. I flew over to the G-Sphere, created a giant Mjolnir construct, and grand slammed Magneto into the train yard; luckily, he crashed into a small area of empty land, so the explosion didn't destroy any property. Still, the night was young, I would have plenty of chances to cause millions of dollars in property damage.

"_Yo, Gaea!" _I thought to her as I flew down to confront Magneto again; yeah, he was still alive. "_I need to get this fight somewhere private, like middle of a dessert private; any ideas?"_

"_Would you like to try the Geo-Portal?" _she asked me. "_It'll take maybe two minutes at the most, but if you provide me with the proper circumstances, I can make your request a reality."_

"_What do you need?"_

"_An energy field, big enough to encompass the train yard. After that, I can use the energy to move your battle elsewhere, although I do recommend you kill this fool; it'll make the rest of your night so much easier._

"_Look, I know you're down with the whole 'kill anyone who gets in your way' thing. I mean if that wasn't the case, you wouldn't be single, your children wouldn't be in maximum lockdown, and your grandkids might actually visit you every few centuries. Still, i'm not like you, I mean, i'm not above killing for the right reasons, but not every bad person deserves to die, i'm no executioner, and i'm sure as hell not yours'."_

I was way too brutal, I hit way below the belt, and for a split second, I could actually feel Gaea sadden. Still, she resumed her cold, careless demeanor, and went on.

"_Fine," _she responded, her voice extremely testy. "_Just do your part; and is there anywhere in particular that you would like me to send you and your sparring partner?"_

"_Gimme the biggest desert in the U.S. please, that should give me a good home field advantage."_

This time, Gaea was the one who broke off the conversation as I charged myself with G-Force, and smashed into the ground. I willed the energy to burst in a small, but powerful blastwave. Powerful enough to knock Magneto on his ass again, but only strong enough to barely phase the metro trains; didn't want them exploding too soon. As the energy dispersed, I willed it to increase in power, fan out to the perimeter of the train yard, and build the massive barrier that would serve to be the battleground perimeter, and the one way ticket out of here for me and Magneto. The barrier was slow to build, in fact Magneto managed to get up, and throw a spare metro train at me, which I simply grabbed by the front, and threw away. Yeah, maintaining this barrier was not gonna be a walk in the playground, and if I wanted to stand even the slightest chance of keeping it together, I had to use as little of my other powers as possible; still, that didn't mean that I was completely defenseless. Gaea said that I could control the earth around me, earthbending basically, and as Magneto reared back, preparing to throw a couple more trains at me, I tired this ability out for the first time. I sensed around for all of the rocks littered around the train yard, and got an enormous amount of feedback. Now don't get it wrong, my plan was not to throw individual rocks at Magneto; that've been stupid. Instead, I willed the rocks to be at the ready, on standby, until I was ready to use them. Magneto launched four train cars at me, and after batting them away, and dodging a few electromagnetic bolts, I focused on the rocks, and swung my arms left and right. Two huge streams of rocks, thick enough to put smash an SUV, tackled Magneto from both sides, and kept up the assault, like mid air snakes on the attack. Even with this amount of rocks, they wouldn't have been able to faze Magneto if I didn't charge them with a good amount of G-Force, and even then, they were only barely affecting him. Still, what are powers for, if not for a little creativity? After the fifth go around, I willed the rocks to join together in a giant mesh, and before Magneto could attack me again, I mimicked a wide swing on him, and the giant rock mesh slammed into him in the form of a giant fist. I must've put more umph in the swing than I was going for, because Magneto went flying straight through an entire metro train. Still, the old man got up, roared loudly, and blasted me with another electromagnetic Kamehameha. This time, I knew he was giving it some effort, because this blast could've easily engulfed five metro trains, and destroy twice as much. I would've blocked it, but I didn't have the Geo-Force to spare; well, actually I did, but my body was struggling as much as it was, without adding another load to the effort. I couldn't dodge the blast either, if it crashed into the metro trains, the explosion would rip through my unfinished barrier, and probably spill into the traffic; in other words, I had no choice but to derail this puppy somehow. As if Gaea had heard me, and she probably did, time slowed down, as we engaged in another mentor to mentee chat.

"_Geo-Genesis," _Gaea simply said.

"_Mind telling me what that is, please?" _I asked her.

"_The rocks, metal, dirt, anything you have at your disposal, can be multiplied an infinite amount of times, using the Geo-Force. The ability to do so does not require much effort, and is one of the most basic skills that my champions have. All you need do is will the element of your choice to duplicate, using the Geo-Force already in it as fuel."_

"_Cool beans, let's give it a shot."_

I focused on the pile of rocks I left sitting in front of Magneto, called them back to me, and gathered a good bit of other rocks, just for good measure. I willed the rocks to form into a wall that, even with Geo-Force, wouldn't have even held off a shot from a tank. I focused on the G-Force in the rocks, like Gaea said, and after I had gotten a lock on the various energy signatures, I willed them to duplicate 3X over. The way this worked was, kinda like when you take a paper, and photocopy it. After getting myself familiar with the energy signature, I took a tiny bit of it from each rock, amplified the energy signature, and abracadabra! All of a sudden, we got ourselves a decent wall. I charged my new fortress, which was about ten feet tall, and five feet wide, with so much Geo-Force it was strong enough to take 100 RPGs no problem. Magneto's massive cannon collided with my rock wall, and even through the initial impact was definitely no laughing matter, my wall held it's ground; wow, the puns are gonna be so easy, it's actually sad. Anyway, I had no desire to stave off a blast for over a long period of time. Now that the barrier was up and running, and while Gaea was working on the teleportation wiz biz, it was time to start fighting serious; God help the train/subway transportation system in this area. I stomped my foot on the ground, willing a column of stone to generate under Magneto's chin, essentially uppercutting him with the earth itself. Once his blast faltered, I roared, thrusted my hands forward, and willed my rock wall to to attack Magneto in a massive wave. The G-Force helped with the impact, and even through Magneto still held up surprisingly well against what was basically a mini avalanche, he was still knocked back a considerable distance. Still, he didn't go own, and with the flick of his wrist, he sent four more metro trains flying at me. Like I said, being a discount Magneto was not gonna fly right now; I had a force field to keep alive. Instead, I simply took to the air, engulfed myself in G-Force, and took off like a bullet to Magneto. I zoomed past three of the train cars, grabbed the last one by the tail, and did a mid air flip, taking the train with me.

"GOING DOWN!" I yelled, as I brought the train down on top of Magneto.

The dude didn't have a second to avoid or block, as I smashed the train on top of him five times, before it was crushed like a soda can.

Amazingly enough, the old man was still kickin. After I smashed the train over him for the last time, he blasted at me with a huge arc of electromagnetism, forcing me to fall back, and put a body shield around myself. Once Magneto recovered, he reverted back to his old strategy of throwing trains at me; something he really should've ditched after he f*(#&amp; it up the first time. Again, I dodged most of his trains with ease, but this time, I blasted him with a G-Force missile construct, grabbed two trains, and while Magneto was dazed, I made him the filling for a train sandwich. Unfortunately, I didn't see him raise that small barrier around him, thus blocking the impact of the attack entirely, and was completely caught off guard when Magneto pelted me in the chest with a huge electromagnetic bolt. I got decked into the ground hard, and Magneto got his revenge on me as he smashed me under six metro trains. I suppose they kind of hurt, but only in the way that getting hit really hard over the head with a pillow hurts. I quickly got up, my head spinning slightly, and my body immediately called for a Timeout. Apparently, Magneto had been a very busy boy. All of the trains on his side of field had been scraped, and were either body size, or SUV sized scraps of metal, all surging with electromagnetism; hell, looking back on it, I was probably in more danger of death by impalement, than just my axe alone. The metal barrage was already underway, barely ten feet away from me, and covering every possible flight route to Magneto. My only option was to create the best barrier I could, and weather the storm. I quickly did that, but man did I have my work cut out for me! Every piece of metal that impacted my shield, was the one that nearly broke the camel's back. It was like someone loaded nukes into a machine gun, hit the rapid fire button, and broke it off, leaving the damn thing going on forever; hell, I had to wrap myself in two extra layers of rock, and charge it with as much G-Force as I could without hurting myself, and even then, my shield was just barely holding together; in other words, I needed to cash my ticket out of this place NOW!

"_Hey Gaea?!" _I desperately asked her. "_Any luck with that transportation thing?!"_

"_Patience, Grant," _she responded. "_The Geo-Portal is nearly ready, just barely under a minute, my champion._

"_Guess I have to improvise a little, huh?"_

"_If you didn't, you wouldn't be much good at this job now would you?_

"_Whatever."_

She was right though. Magneto was on a frenzy, and if I didn't get off my ass and try to get back in the game, i'd either get destroyed, or i'd get destroyed. Suddenly, in a '_holy $#!+ I should've figured this out forever ago' _moment, I got an idea. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, pulled my barrier, and the rock reinforcements in, wrapped it around my body, converting my shield into a makeshift armor, and basically becoming a slimmer, more bad ass version of The Thing. I supercharged my armor with more G-Force, locked on to Magneto amidst the whirlwind of metal, and made a beeline for his face. I easily flew through the scraps of metal, like they were wet paper, and decked Magneto in the head with a flying punch, and kept the pain rack going. I punched him two more times in the face, letting the G-Force do most of the work, I couldn't afford to go all out just yet, and to be honest, I got off some pretty good combs. Sure, Magneto was anything but a pushover, but like I said before, my speed made up for that. After surviving a few hard punches to the gut, which my Geo-Armor thankfully absorbed, I decked Magneto across the face with two hard cross punches. Following that, I kneed him in the gut, punched him the gut twice, and literally swept his legs out from under him, and did a mid air back breaker, followed by a hard uppercut that launched him straight into the force field. Whether it was because of the impact, or because Gaea was finally ready to put this show on road, but as soon as Magneto smacked the force field, the energy started surge like crazy, and instead of a fiery/lightningy barrier, I suddenly got the feeling that I was trapped under a spinning circle of energy.

"_Gaea," _I asked her. "_This you, mama?"_

"_Affirmative," _she responded. "_We're ready to go, but both you and Magneto must be on the ground, it'll make the transition…less difficult."_

"_What does 'less difficult' mean?"_

"_It means your molecular structure has a greater chance to not be violently ripped apart, and scattered to the four corners of the earth. I'd personally recommend this for your charming friend, but because you seem intent on not killing him, I suggest that you keep him grounded."_

"_Gotcha."_

I quickly flew up to a falling Magneto, gave him one last punch across the face, grabbed him by his cape, and after swinging him around a good few times, I let him go careening into a train, and quickly followed suit, decking him with a G-Force punch that was so hard, my armor broke off in chunks. The energy burst caused a minor explosion that probably took out a few surrounding trains, but as everything started to go greenish, and blurry, New York could rest easy on the fact that it's train system was no longer in jeopardy.

Gaea was right about the whole molecular deconstruction thing, because as the Geo-Portal was transporting Magneto and I to Gaea knows where, I could literally feel my body being broken down to a rough collection of atoms and cells, only barely being held in a rough area, by Gaea's sheer force of will. It wasn't painful, in fact, uncomfortable is as close enough to an accurate word that I can use to describe it; but, the sense that Gaea was never gonna let me die from my own trick, took a bite out of my fear, as my atoms played a game of Twister, while riding a roller coaster on steroids. When Magneto and I arrived at our destination, the landing was not pretty at all. Basically, imagine being shot out of a cannon, but your starting point is ten feet underground; yeah, I couldn't have asked for a worse entrance even if I wanted to. Magneto and I were definitely dazed, but we recovered quick enough to do a jump scare, and backtrack away from each other, while looking for some kind of tactical advantage. So far, it looked like the fight was extremely one-sided in my favor.

"_Nice choice, Gaea," _I complimented her for dropping the fight in an uninhabited desert, with no sign of civilization for miles. "_Where are we anyways?"_

"_Nevada," _she plainly responded. "_The Great Basin Desert to be precise; you are free to fight as hard as you wish, so unleash Hades."_

"_Thanks, Gaea, I owe you."_

"_Humph," _she responded, as she left me to my own devices.

Magneto was still silently waiting, probably looking for a glimmer of metal in this godforsaken desert; yeah, that didn't look like a likely prospect. Still, he straightened up in a would be intimidating pose, if I didn't know he was bluffing.

"TAKING ME OUT OF MY ELEMENT, BOY?!" Magneto roared at me from a 100 meter distance. "CLEVER, VERY CLEVER, PERHAPS, UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES I'D EXTEND MY HAND IN INVITATION TO JOIN MY CAUSE! HOWEVER, YOU ARE FOOLING YOURSELF INTO BELIEVING THAT I AM DEFENSELESS WITHOUT ANY METAL TO RELY ON!

He levitated, and his suit started to surge with a crazy amount of electromagnetism; as in, I had to put a barrier around myself, to be protected from what was basically a light show. When the surge died down, Magneto was still more or less the same, but he radiated so much electromagnetism, I could feel my own battlesuit being drawn to him. In other words, I think Magneto just went Super Saiyan 4 in his own way.

"DO YOU FEEL THAT, BOY?!" Magneto roared at me, his voice sounding like he had ingested 50 stereos. "THAT IS THE FULL POWER OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM, OF EVERY PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM! AH, THE POWER! I WOULD THANK YOU, BOY, IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG SINCE I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FEEL THIS POWER AGAIN; FOR THAT, YOU HAVE REGAINED THE PRIVILEGE OF A QUICK DEATH!"

He rocketed down and forward so fast, I had to tap into Blitz Extreme, and up that by 10, just to keep my perspective fast enough to remain in a barely comfortable position. This time though, I could feel something different about me. My speed, while mostly my own, was being enhanced by the G-Force; I would never have been able to up my Blitz Extreme by so much without tapping into it. I felt stronger, strong enough to use a skyscraper as a sledgehammer, and tough enough to survive a planet exploding in my face. Even my ability to use the G-Force, which was severely put to the test back in the metro train yard, had been increase by ten; in other words, Magneto may have gotten a huge power boost, but so did I. As Magneto rocketed towards me, I set myself ablaze with as much G-Force as I could, turning myself into a living nuke, and counter charged him. Right before we collided, I willed the ground underneath him to harden, shoot a G-Force charged pillar of stone upwards, and after it decked Magneto under his chin, throwing his flight pattern slightly off, I poured on the speed, and straight up decked him in the face as hard as I could; and I do mean AS HARD AS COULD! That's right ladies and gentlemen, Super-G was fighting at 100%. The punch was so strong, I smashed Magneto's helmet like it was glass, and created a 20 foot deep, 100 meter wide crater; oh, but Magneto was fine, so I punched him in the face again, shattering his chainmail mask, and knocked him sky high with a massive uppercut.

I wish I could tell you that the fight was a completely one-sided battle in my favor, but i'd be lying so unbelievably hard. The truth? I basically got in a few lucky sucker punches on Magneto; after he recovered, he came back like a G. I soared upwards, and tired to get in a hard punch at Magneto's chest, but he simply dodged, grabbed my arm, and brought an elbow down it hard. If not for my armor, plus my G-Blazer, my fiery Geo-Force armor, I was pretty sure i'd be using my own arm for a weapon; and that wasn't even the worst part. Magneto quickly elbowed me in the face, which hurt like hell, and aside from the massive sonic boom that echoed from that seismic blow, a huge bolt of electromagnetism shot of Magneto's elbow, and sent me soaring back at Mach 2. Again, if not for my G-Blazer, I would've been so totally dead. As I was flying back, and barely even two seconds since I got b!+(# slapped, my body called for a Timeout, and I barely had half a sec to react to the sight Magneto's hands almost an inch from my throat. I quickly grabbed his arms, used his momentum against him, and flipped him over me. Before I could do anything else, I hammer punched him as hard as I could, sending him meteroring into the ground. I maybe had half a second to breathe, before I realized that Magneto had landed on his feet, and was already in punching range of me. I blocked 200 of his punches and kicks, he blocked 200 of mine, I got a few good punches on his face and gut, he got off more than a few good cross punches on my face, a couple good knees to the chest, and sent me flying with the mother of all roundhouses. Of course, I managed to recover, and after knocking a charging Magneto away with a desperate backhand, we went straight up DBZ on steroids.

For maybe a total of five minutes, we went all out on a relentless spree of punches, kicks, and occasional energy blasts. Who had the upper hand in the fight? Well…. it was half an half. When it came to the hand-to-hand part, Magneto had the slight edge, because while I hate to say it, the guy was stronger and faster than me. Seriously, we were flying back and forth through the air, hitting and punching each other about 200-300 times per second, but while I managed to get between his guard every two out of five times, and capitalized with a monster punch and kick combo, Magneto did the same, just four times out of five, and very nearly brought me to my end every time he capitalized. I mean don't get me wrong, I was no slouch, but while the G-Force was helping me stay in the game, and even with my expanded control over it, there was only so much of it I could use at one time without causing me pain. Hell, Magneto had the force of 8 planets and Pluto; I had the power of only one, and even then I couldn't use all of it. Still, the fight wasn't all bad, in fact, there was one small advantage that I had in my playbook. I noticed that when the fight was on, or at least 10 feet near the ground, I got the upper hand a lot more times. Maybe it was the whole Geo-Force being drawn from Gaea thing, maybe the Geo-Force was stronger when I was near the ground, but for one reason or another, when the fight dropped a bit too low, I put the hurt on Magneto more often. By the way, I just want you to know that this fight makes the term 'clash of titans' seem like an average fight video on YouTube. Every punch that connected, caused a sonic boom that left 10 foot craters in the ground, every move was faster than lightning, and every blow that was struck, was enough to decimate ten city blocks; it was exhilarating, terrifying, and straight up awesome, all at the same time. Anyway, after getting in some of the biggest cross punches of the match, plus a few good kicks, my body called for a Timeout, and I just barely ducked under a huge blast of electromagnetism. I quickly jabbed Magneto in the gut, sending him across the desert, and before he could even think of recovering, I rushed in, and popped him under the chin with the mother of all uppercuts, making another crater in the Great Basin; by the way, if you're wondering how old man metal was still alive after a shot like that to his exposed head, he had a super strong body shield around his face, that simple. Moving forward, Magneto managed to stop in mid air, and without any indication, blasted at me with an electromagnetic Kamehameha, big enough to cut a skyscraper down about 20 floors. On a reflex, I tapped into as much G-Force as I could, abandoning my G-Blazer, and countered him with my own blast; I call it the Geo-Wave. Our blasts collided with each other, and we locked in an intense struggle. I could feel Magneto's blast slowly overwhelming mine's, but that didn't top me from taking the fight back to him. I tapped into more and more of the G-Force, willing the energy to explode inside of me, and enhance my Geo-Wave. The effort hurt like hell, kind of in the good way, but it was slowly making progress, pushing Magneto's blast back little by little; I was starting to get hopeful for a minute there, until I felt the familiar sensation of fighting against a million defensemen. Magneto's blast started overwhelming mine's again, and this time, I had no gas left in the tank to try for a comeback. Within ten seconds, I was literally a few feet away from total obliteration, my puny Geo-Wave just barely holding on for dear life. A part of me wanted to give up, to just lie down and die, but the roar of defiance in my ears wouldn't let me do it. I was not gonna let this fight end up like the one between me and Goblin; I wanted to win, I wanted to live, and if I had to kill myself to do that, so be it. I imagined that barrier that let me know when I was using too much G-Force, and told that barrier to f*(# off! I dug deep into the earth, and pooled out a continuous stream of energy, not even bothering to limit the flow. The result was better than anything I could've hoped for. My Geo-Wave went from 6 to 20 in half a second; Magneto didn't even have a chance to up his game, as my blast barreled into him. He shot into the air like a shooting star, but I wasn't done with him. I created a huge Mjolnir construct where he would end up, and used it to grand slam him back into the lower atmosphere. As he was falling, I intercepted him, and took a different approach on my constructs. I created ten Mjolnir constructs on chains, and once Magneto was in range, it was hammer time. I slashed my arms back and forth, each slash indicating a hammer flying into Magneto. I kept up the hammer barrage relentlessly, refusing Magneto even one second to think, and after I got tired of the assault, I decided to end it with a bang. I willed the chains to wrap around his body, and while he was tied up, I created a Mjolnir construct in my hands, overcharged it with G-Force, and brought it down on Magneto's head; to be honest, I can't even rate the amount of boomage that was dealt, probably somewhere around the power to destroy Harlem.

I got knocked back by the explosion, so I had no way of knowing how far Magneto was launched; still, I had enough to worry about as it was. Yeah, I really dropped the ball with that whole limit break thing I did, because my body seized up in pain, and was forced to one knee, as my body struggled to repair itself; that wasn't working out too well.

"_WHAT IN THE NAME OF TARTARUS!?" _Gaea's voice slammed into my head. "_1% OF THE EARTH'S POWER!? ARE YOU TRYING TO-"_

"_NOT NOW, GAEA!" _I interrupted her. "_I NEED A QUICK ENERGY BOOST, WHAT DO YOU GOT FOR ME!?"_

"_NOTHING! THE GEO-FORCE CAN BE USED TO HEAL INJURIES, OR REVITALIZE ENERGY, BUT YOU'VE USED TOO MUCH AT ONE TIME; YOUR BODY IS SHUTTING DOWN TO GET ACCUSTOMED TO THE SUDDEN POWER BOOST!_

"_AND HOW LONG WILL THAT TAKE?!"_

"_FIFTEEN MORE SECONDS, BUT YOU MAY NOT HAVE THAT LONG!"_

I didn't even need to ask her what that meant, I could feel Magneto recovering from being a land based skipping stone. I could feel him flying towards me, his hands surging with makeshift electromagnetic sabers. I launched him a good ways away, and even at the speed he was flying at, i'd probably be able to recover, but i'd only have a nanosecond to make it work; otherwise i'd be dead. I tapped into Blitz Extreme. It wasn't as good as it was without the G-Force boost, but it was enough to move myself into position. I took a deep breath, and moved my right arm, which felt like moving a battleship with one hand, to the ground, just a little ways away from me, as if I was getting ready to do a push up. It was close, so unbelievably, life threateningly, pants s#!+ingly, close. Still, as Magneto's sabers came within three inches of my neck, I quickly raised my right hand in an uppercut, while summoning my axe, essentially forcing Magneto to chose between taking my life, or saving his own. I'll admit it, in the heat of the moment, I was aiming for his head, to slice it in two, and I am not okay with that. Don't get me wrong, Magneto shot upwards like a rocket, and avoided the upswing, but if he didn't…..well, let's not go there. Anyway, that two second interval was so worth it, because not a moment after Magneto was out of range, my body basically reset itself, like an updated computer. After a small burst of Geo-Force, I felt better, stronger, faster, you get it, than ever! I quickly soared after Magneto, and after giving him a hard punch across the face, I hit him across the chest, with my axe, even harder, sending him crashing into the ground. Before you freak out, no, I didn't kill him, in fact, I hit him across the chest to see if I was right about something; I was. Plain and simple, that armor was a billion times harder, thanks to the electromagnetic reinforcement, and if I wanted to end this fight, i'd either have to go for the neck slice, or knock Magneto out; neither of which was easy, the guy had a body shield around him, and he was barely trying to keep it up. Yep, it seemed like I was due for a long drawn out fight, until Gaea slowed down time, to have another chat.

"_Grant!" _she excitedly thought to me. "_I have an idea, are you willing to listen."_

"_You're gonna tell me regardless aren't you?" _I asked her.

"_Now you're catching on, boy. Rest assured, you'll thank me later."_

I was totally ready to take her word on it, but the thing was, I was kinda working in a limited time frame. Magneto was already up and at em', so along with Gaea' fascinating lecture about some new power I have that she didn't bother to tell me about until now, I would have to fight for my life.

"_Gaea!?" _I frantically thought to her, as Magneto charged at me. "_Skip the intro, and give me the dummy version, i'm on the clock here!"_

Before Magneto could slam into me, I tapped into Geo Blitz Extreme, A G-Forced enhanced Blitz, put my hand on his back, did a handstand, and after I got a good grip on his cape, I grabbed another fistful, took the old geezer for a spin, and let him go flying. Then, to add injury to insult, I flew around him, uppercutted him with my axe, and then, in a heat of the moment type accomplishment, I raised my axe up, roared loudly, and brought my axe down in a swinging motion. Before you go all WTF on me, no that it wasn't real lightning, just a manifestation of the G-Force as a bolt of lightning shooting from the sky; but yeah, I slammed Magneto into the ground just like grand daddy Zeus would. I ditched my axe, and flew after Magneto, getting ready for an old fashioned brawl.

"_You were saying?" _I asked Gaea.

"_Magneto's armor," _Gaea started, as he and I exchanged a quick 200 fist slugfest. "_When you struck it with your axe, the energy resonated through it, you, and found it's way to me."_

"_That's one hell of a delivery service," _I thought to her, as I ducked one of Magneto's wide swings, and sent him flying with a hard left hook to the ribs. "_But what does it have to do with this big idea of yours?"_

I engulfed myself in a G-Blazer, and took off after Magneto, who was already on his way back, ready for another tussle.

"_Because, while most of his armor is made of some type of alien metal, something you can't control yet, their are vital parts of the armor that are composed of a Titanium/Lutetium alloy, earth metals."_

"_And that means?" _I asked Gaea, as Magneto smacked me away with a hard backhand, and planted me into the ground with a huge bolt of electromagnetism from above; forcing me to hide under a force field, as the blast steadily got more intense.

"_If you use your power to destabilize the bonds of the metals on a molecular level, the armor will be weak enough for you to tear through it."_

"_I'm not gonna kill-"_

"_I didn't say kill, incapacitate him if you want, but getting through that armor is the first step."_

"_Ok, cool, let's put a pin in that, let me get out from under the oppressive thumb of electromagnetism, and we'll flesh out this whole armor business afterwards."_

I paused our conversation, and focused on Magneto's energy signature. I created three fighter jets out of G-Force, which was cake now, trapping Magneto in a rough triangle, and willed the jets to shoot out endless volleys of missiles. Magneto hid behind a barrier of his own, not even bothering to lessen the intensity of the blast he had over my head, but I saw that coming from a mile away. In half a second, I quadrupled the amount of G-Force in the jets, and willed them to smash right into Magneto. The explosion was enough to severely rattle his force field, and while Magneto had ceased fire on me, I still needed to buy some time to chat with Gaea. I willed the leftover energy to condense, and form a huge G-Sphere; as Magneto was tossed around by internal blasts of fire and lightning, I resumed my conversation with Mother Earth.

"_Ok, Gaea,"_ I thought to her. "_Now what?"_

"_Now," _Gaea thought back to me. "_I have to enhance your sight capabilities by several hundred thousand percent; you need to be able to analyze the armor on a molecular level before you can be able to break them down. It will be extremely disorienting, but i'll freeze time long enough for you to recover from the shock."_

"_Sounds interesting, let's give it a go."_

I should've said by the count of three, cuz Gaea did not f*(# around when it came to getting on with it. As soon as the word 'go' left my mind, a sharp, focused, intense, burning, shocking, and pretty much anything that can be used to describe a mind blowingly agonizing sensation, lit up my eyes; it was like a thunderstorm, a wildfire, and a hurricane times a trillion, was taking place inside my eye sockets, not to mention my brain. It was like Gaea had melted my head, and was twisting it around violently. From my perspective, the pain lasted for a good minute or so, but when the pain started to ebb away, and my vision sorta cleared up, I saw that Magneto was only just now getting out of the G-Sphere. He rocketed after me, breaking the sound barrier in under a second, but before I could charge him back, everything in my head went to hell. It was like a kaleidoscope had exploded in my eyes; one second everything was normal, the next, everything was outlined in green. Even more, there were times where I could literally see atoms, cells, molecules, you name it; oh, and as my vision kept bouncing around erratically, my eyes felt like they were being used as pinballs in a field of glass. Magneto barreled into my chest, and started pounding away. I managed to put a G-Blazer around myself, and after getting decked in the face to many times to count, I managed to get Magneto off of me with a lucky backhand, but I still couldn't see for $#!+, and Magneto was still out for my head.

"_FOCUS, GRANT!" _Gaea slammed into my mind, while Magneto simultaneously slammed into my chest. "_I have enhanced your sight to unimaginable levels, but it is still under your control; focus on what you want to see, and your eyes will adjust to your will!"_

Magneto kicked me in the face, and sent me flying into the ground with a huge electromagnetic bolt. Lucky for me, that was just what I needed. I focused hard on willing my sight to focus on the way it was before Gaea gave me mega laser eye surgery. To be honest, Gaea should've started with the instructions, because it was so laughably easy to control this new power, I kinda felt bad about not being able to control it in the beginning. Anyway, my sight cleared up just fast enough so that I could catch a frightening jump scare of Magneto about to deck me in the face with a hell of a lot of voltage in his right fist. I tapped into Blitz Extreme, made two rocks spurt out of the ground as handholds, just behind me in arms reach, and after grabbing them, I pulled myself into a backflip, managing to catch Magneto under the face; I even took a page out of Storm-Lord's book, and made a bolt of G-Force come out of my foot. I then tapped into the highest speed I could get with Geo Blitz Extreme, not even bothering to put a G-Blazer around myself, and hit Magneto hard in the chest. He would've been flying like a rocket, but I was too fast for time to have control of that factor. Instead, I basically did a single version of Delta Speed Thrasher, where I flew around Magneto as fast as I could, beating the everliving $#!+ out of him; I also added some G-Force lasers from my eyes into the mix. As I kept Magneto in speed limbo, Gaea and I finished up our game plan.

"_Ok Earth Momma," _I thought to her. "_How does this whole molecule destabilizer thing work?"_

"_I'll take care of that," _Gaea thought back to me. "_As of now, you are in no condition to try wielding anything as precised as molecular level attacks, you might accidentally split an atom."_

"_Wouldn't wanna do that, but still, what am I supposed to be aiming for here? What areas of his armor are vulnerable?"_

"_Use your enhanced vision, will it to see the Titanium/Lutetium elements."_

I did as she said, and my eyes got the message at the speed of sound. Suddenly, Magneto's lower torso, biceps, thighs, and calves, were are sparkly green. It was like the suit was saying "_here are some fun places to break me!"_

"_Alright," _I thought to Gaea. "_Just give me that molecular breaker thingy, and we can get-"_

Faster than my body could call for a Timeout, Magneto released a huge explosive wave, blowing me away, as he was finally allowed to crash into a small mountain in the distance. I got up relatively quickly, but so did Magneto. He roared like Leonidas, as he blasted at me from every angle with huge bolts of electromagnetism; like, enough to destroy skyscrapers, level of big. I was forced to fly around like a plane in a dogfight, as I tried desperately not to get fried. Dunno how I was gonna smash Magneto's molecules now.

"_Having fun?_" Gaea asked me after about a minute of aerial maneuvering; what a mythological…uh, nevermind.

"_Well what do you expect me to do?!" _I snapped at her. "_How am I supposed to hit him if he keeps makin' it rain purple thunder?!_

"_Enhance the gravity!"_

"_OK, WHAT?!"_

"_Come now, Grant, you should be used to this already. At any rate, yes, you have the ability to effect the earth's gravity. To accomplish this, all you need do is will a surge of Geo-Force under the area of earth you want to affect. The gravity will affect you as well, but you've already been exposed to Jupiter levels of gravity; your enemy has probably not had that level of conditioning. Still, do not overextend yourself, enhance the earth to be no more than X10 it's gravity._

"_Ok, I got that, but you're still gonna hold my hand though the molecular thingy right?"_

"_Of course. Also, as a precaution, i'll encase you in some rock armor; that friend of yours is too unpredictable for my liking."_

"_Ok then, it's settled! BRB Gaea, I gotta ground Magneto."_

I cut off the conversation, and started to scheme. As Magneto continually tried to strike me down with his electromagnetic temper tantrum, I willed the ground just under him to form into a giant hand, which Magneto was much to distracted to notice it. I waited for the right moment, still dodging purple lightning left and right, and finally, when I was absolutely certain that I would catch him by surprise, I willed the Earth Hand to fly up, and grab Magneto like a ball. Before Magneto could rage quit out of it, I willed the hand to surge with an insane amount of G-Force, frying him just a little bit, and willed it to throw Magneto to the ground. Before Magneto could get up, I willed the ground to enhance its gravity by 10X for an area encompassing 2 miles. I hit the ground just a few feet away from him, and as soon as I did, the earth wrapped around me in a rough battle armor, as in really chunky, bulky, and covering my entire arms in a rough cluster of rock. I was gonna protest to Gaea about this look, but she clearly wasn't done. My armor started to crack and crumble, the rocks starting to spread evenly across my body, until it chiseled into something amazing. My arms, legs, feet, hands, head, everything was covered in a nice even coat of metal. Even my face, which was also covered, felt perfectly free, and the eye holes were perfect. I looked at my body for a quick sec, and if you imagine The Thing as a slimmer, toned, brownish grey rock dude, with green lines running through his body, but with a face that could make a heart of stone melt, then you get me.

"_Nice suit, thanks Gaea," _I told her.

"_My pleasure, Grant," _she said while turning on my molecular destabilizer fists; ironically enough, it was basically the symbol for chemistry hovering around my fists. "_Now, I believe you have a job to do."_

No kidding. Even as Gaea said it, Magneto was already on his feet. He wasn't able to fly, hell he probably wasn't gonna be able to react at Mach 3 speeds, but he was still up and about.

"Just so you know," I started, deciding to taunt him a little bit. "I'm only gonna slightly enjoy this."

I ran full speed, ready to finish this fight.

Starting out, Magneto almost got me with a quick draw blast of electromagnetism, but my body called for a Timeout, and I managed to duck under it, and deck Magneto in the stomach at full force. Even as a crater erupted in the ground from the punch, Magneto was still held in place; gotta love X10 Earth's gravity. Also, I noticed that when I punched Magneto's armor, the molecules basically jiggled, like drops of water. It wouldn't be an instantaneous process, but from the tactical advantage that I had, it shouldn't have been too long before his armor was weak enough for shredding. By the way, if you're wondering why Magneto's armor was so strong, even in the places I had already stabbed him in, it's because of the alien metal. Whatever it was, it could absorb and amplify energy, making it at least 20X stronger than it originally was; hell, by punching Magneto's armor, I could see that the whole G-Force vs. Electromagnetism thing was basically like fire and ice, we both cancelled each other out, both stronger and weaker than the other. Moving on, it took a good three minutes in Blitz, his armor was that strong, before I managed to weaken the molecular bonds in his armor. To hand it to Magneto, even without his powers, he still put up a fight. See, while he wasn't able to fly, he was still able to stand, and surprisingly enough could move at pretty respectable speeds; plus, the guy was a pretty good hand-to-hand fighter. As we fought back and forth, I had to hold my own by using a system of dodging, reversals, and a few good combos that Allyson had taught me during training. Whenever I punched at Magneto, I always aimed at his chest or lower torso, and usually the punches connected 3/5 times. However, when Magneto would punch at me, i'd either sidestep, grab his arm, and bring a hard elbow down on the bicep, or, if he came for a wide swing, i'd block, knee him in the gut, grab the arm, and straight up punch it in the bicep as hard as I could. Oh, and the legs were just straight up too easy to damage. For one, I could do a lot more than punch, and I usually faked Magneto out with a few punches, and quickly got off some good quick kicks to his thighs; by the way, the molecular thingy could extend to any part of my body, not just my fists. Besides, every time he tried to kick at me, i'd catch his leg in some form or fashion, and pound it. In fact throughout the entire time that I was pounding him, only once i'd Magneto even hint a sign of a good struggle. While I was starting to wrap up the molecular busting, he managed to block one of my shots to the gut, and almost pelted me in the face with a desperate, but powerful blast of electromagnetism. I dodged it by doing a backwards cartwheel, kicking Magneto under the chin, and upon recovery, earthbended a continuous stream of discuss shaped rocks, charged them with G-Force, and shot them straight at Magneto; after he got pelted everywhere for at least the hundredth time, I resumed my melee attack.

After another rinse and repeat of punches and kicks, I finally felt/saw it. The molecules melting into gel, figuratively, the Titanium/Lutetium metals becoming as hard as wet paper. Now was the time to finish this, but not in the way you might think. My first thought was to rip through the metals, but that would take to long, plus the metal was still very strong in the unaffected areas, especially with the electromagnetism surging through it; in fact, there was only one real way to end this, but it wasn't gonna be very nice, or pleasant

"_Gaea?" _I asked her. "_I don't really know that much about anatomy, didn't pay much attention in class, so-_"

All of a sudden, in like a nanosec, I felt information just surge into my brain, like a million textbooks devoted to the study of the human body, just downloaded into my head. The migraine was hell, and if this was real time, Magneto would've stomped my ass into the ground; thankfully, Gaea remembered to turn on the time stoppers, as she used my brain as a flash drive.

"_Now," _she thought to me. "_You know everything about the subjects of biology and anatomy, from every person who has lived, or currently lives. I shall explain why this is possible, but only after this conflict is resolved. In the meantime, If this information will help you accomplish your goal of defeating Magneto, but without killing him, then use it."_

"_Uhhh, thanks, G; I…thanks."_

Yeah, I can't even explain how to feel after that experience, so i'll just skip back to the part where I kick Magneto's ass. I used my powered up vision to see through Magneto's armor, and through his skin. For some reason, my brain just knew where all of Magneto's important arteries/veins were, how I could stab him without killing him, and even picked up some kind of foreign energy coursing through the almost already healed stab wounds I had dealt him earlier; guess he had some type of healing serum in him or something. Anyway, in less than a second, I had already had a game plan, and I didn't even do any of the work. I started punching at Magneto again, getting some good shots on the face, and after a good right cross punch, that transitioned into a roundhouse kick, I summoned my sword in mid spin, and on the come around, stabbed Magneto in the side of his stomach, just far enough away from any major arteries, and drove the blade up to just under his ribs. He screamed a horrible scream, but I couldn't afford to let my conscience get in the way; again, this was the most efficient way to end this, besides, I wasn't going for the kill. After I had stabbed him in his side I quickly hit him in the face with a stiff right jab, summoned my axe, willed the blade to jut out, and stabbed him in his right arm, and also dragged that wound out. Yeah, I think you get the point, three stab wounds, and three important limbs later, Magneto was bleeding all over. He started stumbling, he was passing out, as the fight continued, his swings were so sluggish and slow, I actually think a three year old stood a better chance of fighting me; this was perfect. See, killing, or amputation wasn't the name of the game, no, it was blood loss. As I stabbed and slashed Magneto, the idea was to make him bleed out enough, to where he was physically incapable of fighting. Sure, it wasn't instantaneous, in fact I actually had to drag the fight out for an extra minute in real time, but after so much blood loss, Magneto could barely stand; now it was time to save him. I focused on Magneto's arms and legs, and after getting a full scope of the severity of his wounds, I inferred how much G-Force was actually needed to close them, and did so. Yeah, there is no easy way to say it, I cauterized his wounds with the fiery/lightningy Geo-Force. It wasn't pretty, and I could only imagine how much pain Magneto was in, but at least he would live; besides, if the blood loss wasn't bad enough, the G-Force first aid was sure to take the fight out of him.

As I finished sealing up his wounds, I walked over to Magneto, turning off the extra gravity. I grabbed him by his collar, and was about to cuff him, but then reality warped again.

Immediately, I was all like 'f*(# no!', because when reality warps, especially for me and my friends, that is usually a sign for a longer task ahead; this situation did not disappoint in the slightest. Immediately, I felt weird, like one of my vital organs was missing. No, that wasn't really the case, but for some reason I felt strange, like I was off sync with myself; still, that was just an appetizer for the things to come. In less than a second, I was thrown into the fire. From every angle, I was getting blasted with continuous, extremely powerful rays of energy. Some of them felt strange, as in I couldn't identify what they were, but some of them felt so familiar, it was almost chilling to imagine the possibility of how this energy signature was even here. I was of course talking about the massive amounts of solar fire being power slammed into me; seriously, even with my updated durability, this $#!+ still stand like a b!+*#. I couldn't feel any of my G-Force senses, but based off of the sheer number of blasts, I could imagine that Magneto had called in the Doombot cavalry, meaning I might have to bunker down for a while. I imagined a barrier forming around myself….and nothing happened! Seriously, at first I thought it was just a little disorientation from the reality warping, but I couldn't feel Gaea, my connection to the earth, or anything; I wasn't a sitting duck, but I was definitely short a few aces up my sleeve. I tried getting up, and even though I managed to get up to a rough standing position, the energy blasts intensified a $#!+ton more, forcing me back to a knee. Again, the problem wasn't the pain, although at this point, it was definitely at a 7. No, the problem was not being able to see, not being able to find a good vantage point to strike from, not being able to tell where I was going, or what was waiting for me on the other side. I stayed under fire for a good 30 seconds before building up the strength to rocket out of the death rays, but before I could get around to doing something delightfully stupid, I felt it, that rush of power, that feeling of being connected to the ground,the ability to feel the hundreds of metal robots orbiting around me; Gaea was back, and i'm only barely ashamed to admit that I kinda missed her.

"_GRANT!?" _she screamed into my head, also expressing an intense feeling of worry, and relief. "_ARE YOU WELL, ARE YOU INJURED? HERE, LET ME PUT UP AN ENERGY BARRIER!"_

Not even a half a second later, a G-Force barrier materialized around me, blocking off the oncoming damage, and giving me a second to breathe.

"_T-Thanks, Gaea," _I thought to her. "_I had them on the ropes of course, but it was nice of you to lend a hand."_

"_Do not mock me!" _she snapped. "_Do you have any idea how hard it is to lock onto your biosignature after reality has been twisted around you?! I nearly lost you, Grant! I-"_

"_Awwwwe! You care about me, don't you?"_

She didn't answer, but I could feel her consciousness shift, her emotions resemble an odd mix of love, protectiveness, and ownership. She loved me in the way a girl loves her dog, but it was definitely love.

"_Grant," _she started. "_I haven't had a champion in so long. I've been alone for years upon years, unable to be with either of my previous consorts."_

"_Please, just no." _I plainly said. "_I don't wanna hear about your otherworldly ex-boyfriends."_

"_What I am saying is, for a moment, for the small pocket of time that I was disconnected from you, I found myself alone again; and that frightened me."_

"_Does this mean that we are finally on the same page here, you know, about caring about other people and such?"_

"_Don't press your luck, boy. I have dealt with heroes before, and they are almost never what they seem, or never get the happy ending they deserve; I do not wish the same path for you."_

"_I can understand that, but this is what I have to do. With the earth's mightiest heroes gone for a while, it's up to the next generation of heroes, me and others, to step up and take responsibility for the world; The Avengers won't be around forever, and the world needs us to be ready and take the mantle of being its defenders. Gaea, I swear to you, I will be everything and more of what it means to be your champion, but I also swear to be the best superhero, and fill in for The Avengers, that I can be. I know we got off to a rocky start, but if this is gonna be a forever thing, then we need to be on the same wavelength. I need you, Gaea. I need your power, strength, knowledge, and guidance, if i'm gonna succeed at this; what do you say?"_

Gaea, thought on my words for a total of three seconds, which really drags in Blitz, before answering back.

"_You have everything I am, and more, my champion. I will stand by you always, and when we are truly untied, it is our enemies that will feel fear!"_

Insane power started to rumble inside of me, which either meant that half pound brisket was not loving me back, or Gaea was jacking me up on earth steroids.

"_Show them who you are, Grant! Show them what it means to be the wielder of the Geo-Force, the champion, the titan of the earth! Who are you, Grant?! WHO ARE YOU?!"_

The light went ding in my head, and all of a sudden, in a huge burst of realization, I had found it; my superhero name, the name that I would own, and the name that the world would remember me by forever, or at least until I retired.

"I AM GEO-TITAN!" I roared aloud, as I harnessed the massive power Gaea was feeding me, and forced it outwards in a huge, larger than life explosive wave.

Like I said, there were hundreds of robots, about 500 or so, shooting at me from every angle. After that explosive wave, the number quickly went down to just a little over 50. I used my metal powers to lock on to the rest of the targets, and did something so bad ass, even Storm-Lord would've been jealous. I summoned my axe, using it as a conduit for the G-Force, and after charging it with a good chunk of energy, willed it to shoot off 60 powerful bolts in every direction, pelting and trashing the remaining robots to scrap. On a first glance, it would seem like that was the end of the fight; Magneto basically retreated, used the robot onslaught as a cover, and went back to Doom to either lick his wounds, beg for mercy, or both. Hell, I thought that too, until I heard slow clapping in the distance. I turned around, and nearly had a heart attack. Not at the sight of Magneto, he was still in shambles, probably barely being held together by that healy stuff in his system; nah, the real deal breaker was the company he was with. Yeah, to either side of him were: Sabertooth, Wolverine's favorite playmate, Mystique, that blue scaly lady, who was wearing some type of battle armor, Toad, who was basically a green slimy discount Nightcrawler, Blob, who was looking less like a pile of dough, and more like John Cena on Super Soldier Serum; seriously the guy was jacked as hell, and the fact that he had an orange aura around him, didn't help my morale. Finally, there was the Juggernaut. The guy looked intimidating in his all red battle armor, although his helmet looked really stupid. Normally, and especially under these circumstances, I wouldn't have been too worried about this set up. Mystique and Toad were throwaway villains compared to me, Sabertooth was only one swing of my axe, and all it would take is one 80% power swing, if even that, to bring down Blob; only the Juggernaut should have posed a serious threat to me. Again that would be the case, if these guys weren't glowing all familiar like. For starters, Toad and Mystique had a brilliant golden aura around them, like Super Saiyans in training. If they were anything like Sunbird, then this fight might've been difficult, and that's not the worst part, considering the fact that this was confirmation that Doom had at least two stones in his possession. Everyone else, Sabertooth, Blob, and even Juggernaut, were glowing with that Hercules stone aura; f*(#!^$ $#!+, this was gonna be a Wrestlemania event, and not in a good way.

"Impressive resilience, boy!" Magneto called out to me. "Again, I can't stress enough how useful you would be in my Brotherhood! Yet here you are, alone, foolish, about to-"

Whatever else he was gonna say, was clearly put on hold, because in mid sentence, a green explosion, similar to a giant firework, erupted in the air, and after a bit of razzle dazzle, a small green dot, about the size of half dollar coin, flew down at me, at the speed of a rocket. I barely had time to think "_Is that what I think it is?", _before my hand instinctively reached up, and grabbed…the f*(#!$% stone of Demeter!

Now, don't get me wrong, I know when I do something right, so I knew without a doubt, that I had sent this thing back to the Helicarrier with my unconscious friends; so why the hell was it here?! Honestly, that question would have to wait, because I had a more pressing matter at hand. See, my magical immunity was still holding down the fort, so however much this energy was coursing over me, it was not getting inside. However, this was different. This energy felt…good, natural, like the world's best protein shake; the energy from the stone felt so close to home, that I kinda, maybe, sorta…..let it in. In retrospect, that wasn't the safest thing I could've done, but then again, when did 'safe' ever describe me? As the power surged through me, I felt more connected to the earth, as in Gaea was the rock, and now, all the trees, plants, and all other associated stuff was now coursing through my veins. The surge was unbelievable, revitalizing me, and giving another few bars of stamina; I honestly believe I could've fought for months on end without rest. Good thing, cuz it looked like I was gonna be in for a little something like that. After that flare, I was pretty sure that the Brotherhood was gonna try for an all-or-nothing assault, and I was ready to go all out as well, but just like my first encounter with Gaea, time had basically stopped.

"_Earth Momma?" _I asked her. "_Is this you?"_

"_Nope." _Gaea responded. "_But….3,2,1, aaaaaaand."_

Another presence bombarded into my head, not even asking for permission. I was slightly miffed about that, but considering the fact that I knew who she was, and that she felt so familiar to the new energy coursing through me, I let it slide.

"_Ah!" _a cherry, motherly, and slightly done kinda voice echoed in my head. "_So this is who my stone has chosen. Not bad, especially considering that this is an abomination in itself, I mean, no mortal has the right to possess my stone, but-"_

"_Hey, tree hugger?" _I thought to Demeter. "_I can hear you, I can hear you just fine."_

"_Ugh, mortals, what a rude people you are."_

"_And this one is just getting started," _Gaea said. "_Let me take this time to apologize for everything he will say over the course of however long this campaign will last."_

"_For you, Gaea," _said Demeter. "_I will forgive his vulgarity."_

"_Ok, ok, timeout!" _I shouted to both of them. "_Look, i'm up to my neck in angry mutant terrorists, still dealing with this whole magic rock bull$#!+, and on top of that, i've got two goddesses in my head; someone needs to do some explaining, as in, right now!"_

"_Wow," _said Demeter. "_The word 'please', seems to be lost on mortals these days. Nevertheless, I will do my best to explain this to you. Obviously you know about the dilemma Olympus is facing, and that the mortal would be usurper known as Doctor Doom, is responsible. As for the stones? Well, magic, especially Olympian magic, is complicated, unpredictable; i'm sure you have seen the results."_

"_Yeah," _I responded. "_Two of those 'results' almost got me and my friends killed."_

"_Do not cast the blame on me, it was your fellow mortal man who did that to you. In any case, the stones are malfunctioning, for lack of better word. Being in your world, or should I say, attuned to its frequency, your plane of existence, is throwing off their calibration to the gods. Contact with you and your friends, our descendants, are as close to matches that they can find, and thus, are drawn to you; my stone especially, considering that you are the champion of Gaea. Earth and nature compliment each other."_

"_True," _said Gaea. "_This power, blends wonderfully with my essence, even if it means dealing with the sarcasm of this boy, every moment of this feeling is worth it!"_

"_Watch yourself, G," _I warned her. "_It's not too late for me to change my mind. Anyway, I get it, the stone is lost, trying to find home, and settled for the next best thing; but if that's the case, why can't you simply take it back? I mean, it's not like I want it."_

"_If it were that simple," _said Demeter. "_I would have extracted it from you already. No, my entire consciousness is in Olympus, defending our borders. Extracting the stone would take too much energy, not to mention, cause a ripple in reality, one that might tear apart everything within a 100,000 mile radius of you, and destabilize Olympus' defensive spells more than it is."_

"_Wow, you guys are really swarmed up there, aren't you?"_

"_Indeed, and I cannot maintain contact with you for long, however, I can instruct you on how to use your new powers, which are permanent, even without the stone being fused to your heart."_

"_WHAT?!"_

Before I made Demeter explain, I felt the familiar sensation of several textbooks being dumped into my head; after that, I was a theoretical pro on using my new plant powers, which were actually kinda bad ass.

"_There you are," _said Demeter. "_Now if you'll excuse me, I-"_

Whatever had happened up there in Olympus, it had upset Demeter, because she said a stream of words in ancient Greek, that i'm pretty sure was not appropriate for the general public.

"_YOU DARE ATTACK MY SACRED GARDEN!" _she bellowed at somebody who's life was about to suck. "_FOR THAT AFFRONT, I SHALL CLAIM YOUR HEAD!"_

And on that positive note, Demeter severed her connection to me, and time unfroze. Honestly, I was kinda banking on the idea that the whole stone from the sky thing had happened to fast for the Brotherhood to notice, but considering the glowing tree shaped emblem on my chest plate, plus the look of their dumbstruck faces, i'd say that my cover was blown; as in, bigtime. Magneto looked the most dumbfounded out of all, his face portraying an almost perfect blend of rage, shock, and glee.

"Ok," I started, trying to stall for time. "I know how this looks, and I know how you must feel, but how about you guys go home? I mean, Magneto, you're f*(#$&amp; up, if you send your goons after me, i'm gonna f*(# them up, so what say we all just take a day long timeout? I mean, come on, are any of us really having a good night right now?"

You'd think after that motivational speech, Magneto and friends would've nodded their heads, wish me a good night, and go out for beers; instead, Magneto shouted "TEAR HIM APART, GET THAT STONE!" at the top of his lungs, and the fight was on. Mystique and Toad bursted into golden flame, and flew straight at me; between the two of them, I imagine they had about half of Sunbird's power, and even less of her skill. Sabertooth and Blob also charged me, running at about 200 mph; by the way, using my X-Ray vision, no other way to name that, I could see a type of serum in all of the Brotherhood members, if it was some type of speed serum, it explains why they could move so fast. Still, that wasn't the worst part. Just before Juggernaut started charging, Magneto pulled him aside for a chat.

"The boy will defeat them effortlessly," he whispered to him. "Now that he has bonded with the stone, his power will have increased exponentially. I shall activate the Omega Defender, you must take care of the boy, use the demon if you have to."

I could see Juggernaut smile like kid in a candy store.

"I got ya," he said in gruff voice. "Hell, you better hurry up with that fancy suit of yours, boss, otherwise there might not be anything left for you to smash."

"I'm counting on that," Magneto said before he took off at like Mach 4, headed straight into space.

All of that happened in like a 2 seconds, and while I was in Blitz, I was still about to be in over my head; good thing I was now packin' twice the power.

"_Ready for another round, Grant?" _Gaea asked me.

"A_lways ready," _I responded. "_But a little memo? When the suit's on, i'm Geo-Titan, no one else."_

I stretched my palms out, and went to work.

Quick tutorial of my new powers. I was now connected to the energy of all plant life on the earth, essentially doubling my already insane strength, speed, and everything else. Also, I could pretty much manipulate, generate, and mutate any type of plant life to my wish, as long as it was somewhat possible. I couldn't make a flame throwing rose, but a man eating weed was fair game. Oh, and for the record, I didn't have to be in a plant inhabited, or sustainable area, to generate my plants. So yeah, being in the middle of a dessert, as far as i'm concerned, same thing as being in farm land. Anyway, I stretched out my hands, and willed five massive massive cables of flexible tree bark, big and thick enough to be connected to bridges, to shoot out of the ground, and wrap around each member of the Brotherhood, putting their charge on hold. Mystique and Toad were caught easy, although I had to pump extra G-Force into the plants to make sure that they didn't burn. The same thing could be said for Sabertooth, as I clamped him up in a tree cable, but not for Blob and Juggernaut. Don't get me wrong, Blob wasn't all that strong, but he was giving my tree cable more of a fight than I wanted him to, and Juggernaut was straight up tearing through his; I had to summon five tree cables just to hold him down for a few seconds. Seeing as there was no real effective way to hold those two in place for too long, I had to accelerate my strategy. First, I willed the Tree Cables, official name, to slam each member of the Brotherhood into the ground time after time, like a giant underground octopus in a frenzy. After a good few face plants to the ground, I willed the tree cable holding Blob, to launch him into the air, and after I charged it with more G-Force, I willed it to smack him half a mile backwards into the nearest small mountain. Next, I willed the Tree Cable around Juggernaut to launch him up into the air as well, but I got a bit more creative with him. I willed the Tree Cable to break apart in massive chunks, latch on to Juggernaut, and with the help of a lot, and I mean A LOT of G-Force, I trapped Juggernaut in a makeshift prison that was about as strong as the Titanic, you know, when it didn't get sunk by an iceberg. I didn't stop there. Using my earthbending, I opened up a one way chasm, about a mile underground, and dropped Juggernaut inside; I figured I had maybe a good five minutes before he busted out, so I quickly went about taking out his support.

I started with Mystique and Toad. I willed their Tree Cables to launch them at me, and in a quick one-two combo, I quite literally punched their lights out; i'm almost certain that I didn't kill them.

After them, I went after Sabertooth, who surprisingly enough made it out of his Tree Cable. He charged me, running on all fours, and pounced at me like a puma. I simply side stepped, summoned my axe, and chopped his head off. I would've felt guilty about that, although the blood was more than enough for me too feel nauseous, but Sabertooth was more animal than man; to me, it was like putting down a rabid dog. Anyway, I couldn't take the risk of him regenerating, so I created a giant tulip-like plant around him, and willed the plant to clamp him up, and bury him underground. I may have willed that plant to fill with digestive acid, just to be even safer; yeah, I straight up murdered Sabertooth.

With the three runts out of the way, I flew after Blob, who was just now getting up. I decked him in the face with a hard flying punch, launching him straight through the mountain, and after meeting him on the other side, launched him straight into the air, and knocked him back to the ground with a really hard hammer spike. I didn't know whether that attack had knocked him out, I mean even with my boost of power, forcing me to dial back my hits to about 40% power, sometimes it's harder to gauge more durable opponents. So, in order to feel better about the situation, I stomped on Blob's head with the force of a falling anvil; that did it for sure.

So yeah, in less than a minute, I soloed most of the Brotherhood; damn, sometimes i'm actually in awe of how unstoppable I am. Well, that's what I told myself until I heard the ground literally break.

Juggernaut launched out of the ground like an angry gopher, his body surging with orange Hercules energy, as well as some type of crimson energy, that I assume was directly related to the 'demon.' He looked extremely pissed off, which in itself was a huge problem; I mean, I trapped the guy in a ball, put him over 6 feet under, yet here he was looking like he got done with nothing more than a minor timeout. He cracked his knuckles, and ran towards me, breaking Mach 3 in under a second. I tapped into Blitz, counter charged him, and before we collided, I ducked under his wide swing, and punched him as hard as I could in his chest.

For the record, this punch was strong enough to level a city, created a crater big enough to bury two skyscrapers side by side, and created a small tremor that could probably be felt within 3 miles. Yet, even after that kind of shot to the chest, Juggernaut barely stumbled backwards. In fact, I put so much of myself into that shot, banking entirely on the thought that it'd be enough to make him skyrocket more than a Smash Brothers character, that I forgot to do the whole plan B dodge thing. Juggernaut quickly took advantage of that, and grabbed me by the legs, slamming me into the ground back and forth like a rag doll. That didn't hurt all that much, but it was humiliating as hell. After that, Juggernaut launched me into the air, and before I could move, and even before my body could call for a Timeout, I felt the guy hammer punch me back to the ground, slam his feet into my chest, and start pounding me relentlessly. This time, it actually hurt, and not in the way that other opponents have been able to kinda make me feel their punches; no, EVERY PUNCH JUGGERNAUT LANDED, CAUSED ME SERIOUS PAIN! How many times he pounded me, I don't know, i'm surprised I didn't black out. All I knew, was that after a certain point, I got fed up with being a punching bag, and released a desperate power blast to get him off of me.

Yeah, I think I need to specify how much of a tank this guy was. The blast I just released, probably could've blown through Titanium without a sweat. Even with a blast like that, Juggernaut barely got off the ground: I had to quickly get up, get a running start, and deck him hard in the chest again, before he actually went tumbling about 50 meters. He got up quickly, and charged me again. This time, even though I also counter charged, I went at it from a more tactical angle. I punched him hard in the chest again, but this time, retreated before he could grab at me, grabbed his arm, and flipped him on his back. As soon as he was down, I started wailing on his face mask, which tore apart quicker than wet paper, even if it wasn't any type of metal I could discern. As soon as I tore off his face mask, revealing the lumpy potato he probably called a face, Juggernaut managed to make me backtrack a little, as he tired for a surprise punch, followed by a backwards double kick, one that would've propelled him on top of me. I ducked under it, gave Juggernaut another hard punch to the gut, kind of impaling him with my fist, and roared as loud as I could, as I released a massive wave of G-Force, lightning up Juggernaut like he was a candle. I was pretty sure that he at least grunted, but there was really no indication of whether or not I was actually doing any real damage. Before I could be surprised in an unpleasant way, I quickly took off straight up, and after reaching a good 3,000 feet, I let Juggernaut go, activated my G-Blazer, tapped into Blitz Extreme, and took off backwards. Stop me if you can predict what I did next, but yeah, I got a flying start, came back around in less than a second, got off a hard, and in this case, explosive, punch on Juggernaut, kept going, kept coming back, and kept decking him. I was able to continue that chain for a good 50 hits, before I realized I was doing the equivalent of jack $#!+ to Juggernaut. Still, it wouldn't be me if I didn't end the party with a bang. I flew backwards one more time, and after breaking Mach 5, came back around, did a dive, and came back up with a really, really, really, really, really, hard uppercut. Juggernaut blasted off like a Coca-Cola with Mentos in it, and I had to step on the gas to catch up to him. I hit him in the face with a flying uppercut at Mach 4, and after he backflipped twice, giving me time to charge myself with more G-Force, and tackle him hard in the chest, plunging us both back to the ground. We made one hell of a crater, enough to cover the length of a football field. Oh, and just for reference, since I got the memo that Juggernaut and I were gonna make the ground quake something epic, I asked Gaea to locate the unconscious Brotherhood members, wrap them in G-Force cocoons, and stash them underground ten miles out. Don't worry, the G-Force would keep them alive, but not heal them enough for them to regain consciousness; they were safe. Moving on, I kept up the assault on Juggernaut, managing to keep him grounded for a good 10 seconds, while I punched at him hundreds of times, really, really, hard. He was helpless at first, but as his body glowed brighter with that mysterious red energy, he managed to block more and more of my punches. In fact, after he threw a swift jab, almost decking me, I leaned out of the way, giving him enough time to get up, and fight on his feet. As we fought like savage bears, I had to give Juggernaut some credit. For one, the guy knew how to fight, as in like….really good. I only had about two days of rushed Kung-Fu training, mixed in with heavy amounts of improv, but this guy knew his $#!+. There was definitely some Kung-Fu, and probably some other fighting styles in his bag of tricks, like boxing, judo, and so on; hell, the only reason I wasn't getting pounded, was because I used my speed more efficiently than he did. Granted, I was used to it more, but yeah, instead of blocking all of his hits, and basically trying to out bulldoze him, I mostly dodged his swings, attacked the chest and leg areas, and when he was off-balance, attacked him with another flurry of G-Force powered punches and kicks. I managed to keep up my mildly successful streak for a good minute, but then Juggernaut really came busting out of the gates.

He glowed with even more red energy, which was starting to resemble flames at this point, and got even faster; fast enough to actually make me push it to hold my slight speed advantage. Again, going back to the advantages…speed was my only one. Juggernaut was kinda owning me in the fighting department, even managing to get a hold of me once, and deck me so hard, I would've flown into the next state if he wasn't holding me like a rag doll. Before he could deliver another rib shattering punch, seriously, that $#!+ hurt, I turned the gravity up as high as I could, X100, and wailed on Juggernaut's head as hard as I could. This time I wasn't going for speed, just power, and every blow, even though they were spaced about two seconds apart from each other, hit with the force to level the Washington Monument. I dunno if Juggernaut was actually feeling it, or turning into a discount Red Hulk, but it sure as hell felt good to cut loose on him. Still, even with the insane amount of gravity I was putting on him, Juggernaut was still finding ways to defend. He managed to get off a wild reach on me, and even though I deflected his grab, and socked him in the face another time, Juggernaut actually managed to get up, even faster than I could've hoped to put him down. I wasn't in any immediate danger yet, but my body called for a Timeout. I used that quick span of time to get low, build up some power, and kick Juggernaut as hard as I could in his knee, forcing him to the ground again, and came up with a hard uppercut, rattling his jaw. I kept up another volley of punches, occasionally having to move my attention to the legs, but overall, I was going pretty ok; at least it was until I royally f*(#$ up.

See, Juggernaut almost got me with a fast, powerful, made of glowing red energy, jab. I managed to duck under it, not bothering to try for a block, and tired an idea I had used for incapacitating Magneto. I thought that if I used my axe to, don't freak out, sever his right arm, he'd bleed out to the point of exhaustion, after which I would use the G-Force to cauterize the wound. It wasn't something I wanted to do, hell I knew I was probably gonna vomit/have trouble sleeping if I did this, but I was running out of options here; punching, kicking, and even G-Force didn't really seem to be the answer. So yeah, I brought my axe up under Juggernaut's arm with all I had…and it got stuck. Don't get me wrong, the axe cleaved right through the skin, inner tissue, and even managed to hit, and probably fracture, bone; however, it still got stuck, the axe did not get all the way through. In a roar of both pain and being royally pissed off, Juggernaut unleashed a huge explosive wave of red energy, one that blew me half a mile away, and created a crater big enough to be used as a parking lot for 3 NASCAR tracks. Hell, the force of the blast was enough to make me black out for a few seconds, and even then, I got that feeling from back with Dragon Empress, when I felt like I wasn't really getting the full dose of the blast. Obviously it was magical, i've had enough experience with the stuff to recognize it, and my immunity was working in over time. Pieces of red energy were peeling off of me, like I just wasn't fit for the spell to destroy, and I got the feeling that if it were anyone else, they would be a scorch mark on the dirt. Still, that was just a taste. My metal detector sense were going nuts, and my body almost immediately called for a Timeout; I was just able to roll out of the way, as my axe almost impaled me at like Mach 5. Ok, that was scary, but as Juggernaut quite literally floated 10 feet in the air, over the smoke, I saw something that would be on the top 10 list of the scariest $#!+ i've ever seen. Juggernaut was basically a cross between a demon, and an OP porcupine. His skin was dark red, wreathed with blood red flames, and crackling with red electricity. All over his body, bone spikes were popping out. Six in his back, small spiky stubs out of his face, at least ten growing out of each of his arms and legs, small spiky stubs out of each of his knuckles, which were still big enough to gut a lion, and more coming out of his feet. In other words, this guy had officially unleashed the demon. He looked at me for half a second, opened his mouth, which was glowing with red energy, just like his eyes, and unleashed a blast big enough to swallow a skyscraper. My instincts completely took over, and on a complete reflex, I created a shield. Not any shield mind you, the first layer was made of enough G-Force to cover the blast, but it was also made up of tree bark, leaves, vines, and any plant based material that I managed to bring out of the ground. Finally, the last layer of the shield was made up of stone. Under different circumstances, the material of this shield wouldn't be able to block a shot from a cannon, but remember what G-Force does to rocks and such? Yeah, that was happening….. and it still wasn't enough. That's right, the shield was slowly being pushed back, like a slowly descending meteor, and the impact was gonna be brutal. Don't get me wrong, the shield itself was holding up fine, but trying to make it stand it's ground against Juggernaut's blast, was like trying to stop a tidal wave. I tried holding the shield for another five seconds, before I remembered something important. I had the stone of Demeter lodged in my chest, and I literally had the power of the entire world, or as mach of it as I could use without hurting myself, at my disposal, I could fight this guy back. Without dropping my shield, I felt around for the stone's energy, and willed it to explode inside of me, not bothering to worry about safety issues. Yeah, I won't go in that much depth about the energy feedback, but let's just say I had enough power to blow up half the United States, and that was without the G-Force backing me too. I used a good chunk of that energy, mixed it with as much G-Force as I could use, about 1.6% now, and while simultaneously, dropping my shield, unleashed a big ass G-Force/Nature Force, i'll explain the difference later, cannon, taking Juggernaut's one head on.

I won't lie, the power battle was so real, I will not deny that; however, I was still slowly gaining the upper hand, my blast getting closer and closer to Juggernaut, forcing him to amp up his blast too. I quickly realized that he wasn't going all out either, and willed another huge surge of the stone's energy to rush into my blast; the power change was so sudden, Juggernaut didn't even have a chance to up his blast, before mine's completely swallowed him like he was a goldfish getting chomped by a shark. I kept up the blast for a good few seconds, hoping that the energy bath would be enough to take some of the wind out of Juggernaut's sails. After a good ten seconds, I called it off, and decided to fly up to inspect my progress. The one thing I could say was that I succeeded in pissing him off even more. Don't get me wrong, the dude was definitely shook up, but far from damaged. He roared as he flew to intercept me, and managed to fake me out, get the drop on me, and plant a hard right hook across my face, creating a huge KOOM, that sent me rocketing straight into the ground. My body called for a Timeout, and I just managed to get out of the way of what was sure to be a bone crushing stomp, and after recovering, charged my right arm with some G-Force, and hit Juggernaut as hard as I could, actually managing to send the schmuck careening back a few feet. He recovered, almost pelted me with another one of his magic face lasers, and even though I dodged it, the guy obviously had some kind of experience with energy projection, because he straight up opened fire on my ass. I had to dodge huge, explosive, balls of red energy, all the while trying to get some ground back in this fight. Still, even then I wasn't doing all that great. I tried slamming G-Force charged boulders into him, he barely even moved. I trapped him in a giant Venus fly trap, filled it with explosive acid, and even though he got shot into the air like a cannonball, he was unharmed, and made a beeline for me. I smacked him to the ground with a giant G-Fist construct, and when he got up, I did the thing with the giant Mjolnir constructs on chains, and kept the man busy for a total of four seconds, before he unleashed another explosive wave, forcing me to retreat. Again, he tried rushing at me, and even through my body called for a Timeout, I was so off guard, I instinctively summoned my axe, and swept it across Juggernaut's head, sending the guy careening to the side, although I didn't break skin. I flew after him, charged my axe with G-Force, and smacked him to the ground. Before he could recover, or should I say as soon as he stood up, I put the hurt on him. First, I turned on the gravity, although I was less certain that it would effect his him as much, now that he was all demonized. Next, I smacked him across the head twice with my axe, quickly smacked his kneecaps as hard as I could, came up with a hard uppercut, and used the momentum to spin into a hard strike to the forehead, using the butt of my axe. Finally, I wrapped my arm in a layer of G-Force, Tree Cables, and rocks, and then gave Juggernaut the hardest uppercut i've ever given anyone; consider it his early Christmas present. He actually made it a good hundred feet in the air, before I willed to pillars of G-Force to crash into him, from both land and sky, effectively turning him into the filling for a G-Force sandwich. I knew I couldn't keep him like this for long, and didn't plan on it. I buried the head of my axe in the ground, and wrapped it in a good chunk of G-Force, followed by the tree bark, and rocks. By the way, whenever I use all three elements like that, i'll just use the term Triple Threat for it. Also, I really wished I had a strap for my axe, not that it was necessary, but how bad ass would it be if I was swinging my axe around the way Thor does, only mine's having G-Force? Anyway, after wrapping my axe in a Triple Threat, I threw it as hard as I could at the point where Juggernaut had to be, I couldn't see him all that well, and created an impressive explosive wave if I do say so myself. Of course, while the blast was enough to probably rattle Juggernaut's cage, and while I was definitely sure that I had hurt him in some some way, Juggernaut still recovered in like, 2 seconds, and while throwing a volley of energy blasts at me, homed in on me like a Geo-Titan seeking missile. I called my axe back, bobbed and weaved through his blasts, and managed to sneak a hard throw of my axe at his face. Afterwards, we clashed for a good two minutes in Blitz Extreme, which was the equivalent of two long, grueling, extremely pain ridden hours; seriously, those knuckle spikes did not do any favors for my face.

"_Having fun?" _Gaea finally asked me.

"_Not now, G!" _I snapped at her. "_I'm kinda fighting for my life right now, if you got some handy dandy intel for how to take this guy down, now would be the perfect time to share it!"_

I was pretty sure Gaea and I were gonna have it out for a few, before getting on the same page again, but then I felt a different, powerful, and straight up evil presence, hijack our private conversation.

"_Yes, Gaea!" _his dark, demonic voice echoed through my body. "_Tell him about the the consequences of daring to oppose the dread-"_

"_CYTTORAK!" _Gaea roared at him, kinda making me feel like the little kid who watches two grown ups fight. "_HOW DARE YOU DEFILE MY HOLY CHAMPION WITH YOUR PRESENCE, DESIST AND EXIT HIS MIND AT ONCE!"_

"_Why, Gaea? I only wish to have a pleasant conversation with the lad. Speaking of which, has she told you what I did to her last champion, boy?"_

"_YOU WILL BE SILENT DEMON, AND YOU WILL LEAVE HIS MIND!"_

"_Has she told you what she wants of your life, about her ambitious desire for conquest?"_

"_LEAVE!"_

I had no idea what Cyttorak was talking about, or who the hell he was, bad guys are weird that way, and I didn't care, this was a discussion for Gaea and I to have for another time. However, Gaea was most definitely having none of his bull$#!+, because when she screamed "_LEAVE!", _$#!+ got real. You know how it feels when you're ears pop? Well imagine that, but on a universal plain. It suddenly felt like dimensions were being punched apart, and as Gaea basically shoved Cyttorak from my mind, she kinda shoved him away from Juggernaut too; and it showed big time. See, as Gaea and Cyttorak were having it out, so were me and Juggernaut; obviously. When Gaea pushed Cyttorak away, I was just recovering from dodging one of Juggernaut's punches. When I came around with a hard right cross, Juggernaut not only flew back 100 meters, a new personal best, but his face felt almost normal, rather than the feeling of punching steel; hell, I actually felt his nose break. All of a sudden, I got an idea, and I was sure Gaea was gonna absolutely love, or absolutely hate it.

"_GAEA!" _I desperately thought to her. "_PULL BACK, SHUT THAT GUY OUT, I HAVE AN IDEA!"_

Gaea actually growled a bit, but still managed to control her beast mode, and came in for a discussion.

"_Geo-Titan!" _she started. "_Do not listen to him, he is-"_

"_Probably telling the truth about something you wanna keep me in the dark about," _I cut her off. "_But we can have that conversation later, right now, we need to talk about this cool idea I have for taking down Juggernaut. If you-"_

"_Battle Cyttorak on the astral plane, and manage to temporarily expel him from his host, you can deliver the killing blow._

Ok, we were on the same page about one thing, but that last part caught me off guard by so much, I stumbled, and ate one of Juggernaut's fists.

"_Not a bad plan," _I said, recovering, and batting Juggernaut away with a tennis racket construct. "_But I draw the line at killing, I can-"_

"_No, you can't," _Gaea interrupted me. "_Cyttorak is an unstoppable force, one of the oldest and most powerful mystical entities in existence. He imbues his avatars with so much power, they are virtually impossible to kill, or tire out. However, if I separate him from his avatar long enough, you can destroy Juggernaut, and I don't mean a simple knockout, or stab to the heart, you must completely disintegrate him, destroy every trace of him on this earth. I know you hate the thought of it Grant, but if there is a body for Cyttorak to come back to, he will rejuvenate it, and come back even stronger, even destroying Juggernaut may not keep him away for all that long, a few decades at the most. Still, this must be done to achieve victory, and when you look at it from a factual standpoint, you are not even killing him, just putting him in an extended coma."_

I thought on that for a second, brawling with the monstrous Juggernaut. Gaea was right, this guy was not gonna stop, I probably stood a better chance against the Hulk; like it or not, I had to put this guy down for the count, permanently.

"_Ok, G" _I thought to her. "_I'm in, but how much power is it gonna take to put this guy down."_

"_Well," _Gaea said. "_After I knock Cyttorak away from his body, his power will decrease by 65%, but he will still have an extraordinary level of damage resistance. In order to completely wipe him out, you would have to strike him with a blast of energy equivalent to 10% of the earth's energy."_

"_I CAN'T REACH THAT!"_

"_No, you cannot, however, if you were to bury that axe under the earth's surface, I could transfer some residual energy roo the axe. It will take my full attention to fight Cyttorak, much less dispel him from his avatar, but enough of my power will be left so that can charge the axe, throwing in some of Demeter's energy would help the process."_

"_Gotcha."_

"_Last two things. While i'm fighting Cyttorak, the back and forth struggle will affect your connection to me, same as Juggernaut. When he pushes me back, your power will wane, so be careful as you fight on. Also, the energy from this blast will be enough to create a hole big enough to be what used to be the west coast of the United States, in order for that not to happen, you have to will the excess energy to flow back into the earth, like pouring water into a funnel. Not only will that keep the peace, but it will also put more of the energy blast's focus on Juggernaut; it'll completely atomize him, Cyttorak may not have a champion for another thousand years. Best of fortune to you, my champion, here is a tool to help you succeed."_

My body lit up with a ton of G-Force, swallowed by a weave of thick tree bark, and topped off with a fine layer of rocks. The whole getup felt twice as strong as when Gaea first gave me some armor, and even better, I could feel the amazing amount of energy flowing through it; Gaea knew she'd be away for a good while, and gave my suit it's own battery life for me to use, I loved her for that. After making the suit for me, I felt her center of attention change, and a second later, I could feel the astral plane or whatever it was called, explode like the fourth of July; Gaea and Cyttorak were throwing down mad up there. As for me and Juggernaut, well, there was no love lost between us either.

I quickly threw my axe under the ground, and ducked under one of his wide swings, punching him hard in the side as a counter. He stumbled backwards, proving that he was at least somewhat impaired by the lack of his master's full attention, and I pressed on my attack. For a total of maybe…..three or four minutes, we brawled like giraffes; those are some aggressive mother f*(# ^&amp;. I managed to keep up my habit of not dying, by keeping the fight almost entirely in the air. Juggernaut may have been a superior fighter on the ground, but he had zilch experience in aerial combat. Don't get me wrong, there were times where he almost touched me, but for the most part, he was getting owned by my constant use of DBZ combos, and just being a good bit faster than him; that was until another drawback of Gaea being away kicked in. Right as I was in the middle of a combo reaching up to 400 hits, Juggernaut managed to block one of my punches, hit me across the face with a hard left swing, so glad Gaea made my armor to be Juggernaut resistant, and half me in place while he blasted me at point blank range with his face laser. Juggernaut hosed me down with his laser blast for a good five seconds, tearing through a good chunk of my armor's first layer, but I managed to get in a hard kick under his chin, and after he stumbled backwards, I backflipped into position, and knock him away with a hard drop kick. So yeah, that whole predicament was due to my suga mama, Gaea, getting decked pretty hard in the astral plane, not only was my extra speed cut down, but so was my durability. I tried getting back in the fight, and failed miserably at it, when I hit Juggernaut once across the face, got a hard fist to the gut for all my trouble, followed by Juggernaut picking me up, bringing me down on his knee, and hurling me to earth, followed by yet another laser blast. I was completely blown backwards, about 200 meters in total, and when I got up, I saw that most of my first layer armor was destroyed, and a few red flames were smoldering on my tree armor; if I wasn't so handsome, I would've looked completely ridiculous. Anyway, as Juggernaut came flying down after me, I felt a huge surge between Gaea and Cyttorak, and Gaea was the one with the upper hand this time. I got a running start, nailed Juggernaut in the face, and nearly laughed my ass off when he careened straight into the ground #rekt! Juggernaut and I followed that pattern for a good while where we fought, fought some more, and took advantage of each other when our higher ups were losing their respective battle, however, the fight was still kinda in my favor. See, even though I was quitting the Geo-Force cold turkey, I still had access to the Nature Force, via the stone in my chest. So what is the Nature Force you may ask? Well…..it's basically an extension of the G-Force. That's as best as I can put it, it's just an extension of Gaea, just in the form of the collective energy of all plant life that has, is, will, or is even capable of growing out of the ground. It dosen't take the form of lightning/fire, just pure green energy; yeah it's not primordial or anything, the Nature Force is extremely tame compared to the G-Force. Still, for what it was worth, it got me by.

I used it to strengthen my second armor layer, while simultaneously pounding Juggernaut with a volley of blasts, hammer, train, and dinosaur constructs. Juggernaut more often than not was able to break these constructs, but thankfully, it looked like he was either incapable,or just too dumb to attempt making constructs out of his own energy. Still, even the Nature Force wasn't my best trump card. As Juggernaut broke through one of my T-Rex constructs, I used my plant manipulation powers to make him regret that. First, I made a giant Tree Cable shoot out of the ground, take the form of a Chinese Dragon, and slam into Juggernaut multiple times before making it grab him in it's mouth, and fling him into the air. Then, I created a giant spur, the plant kind, attached it to the Tree Cable, made it surge with Nature Force, and slam Juggernaut back to the ground; I did that multiple times, redefining what the term "Wrecking Ball" meant. Still, Juggernaut was far from done, and quickly managed to recover, charging me again with a renewed drive. After that, it was just a continuous punch fest between me and big red, both of us getting some good shots off on one another, and the advantages shifting between which of our patrons were winning their battle. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I felt it. Gaea was on the verge of winning, Cyttorak was on the ropes, trying to at least hold on to his link to Juggernaut. This was my chance to end it, but even if Gaea drove him out, it wouldn't be enough. She was no stranger herself when it came to battle damage, and as such, would only be able to push Cyttorak from Juggernaut for maybe a good half a second, before he came back, probably locking himself in Juggernaut for good; I couldn't allow that. As Gaea hit, or whatever counts as hits in the astral plane, Cyttorak, knocking his connection to Juggernaut off, I tapped into Blitz Extreme, punched Juggernaut as hard as I could, sending him rocketing across the dirt, and willed my consciousness to go into the astral plane. Dunno how I did it, but I did, and let me tell you something, it was chaos, plain and simple. In here, nothing was completely solid, liquid or gas, colors were both vibrant and dim, and the energies in this place seemed…...jumbled, like this was the cosmic dumping ground for everything supernatural; hell, if limbo actually existed, this had too be it. Anyway, I quickly locked on to Gaea's signature, and as soon as the thought popped up in my mind, I was whisked to her side faster than the speed of light. She seemed surprised to see me, but I couldn't focus on that; Cyttorak was my focus. I searched around for him, and after seeing a dark blood red blotch on the edge of whatever the hell he was on the edge of, I found him. Again, in this dimension, nothing was ever solid, or not solid, but I could still make out a rough demonic figure, one with horn-like tentacles protruding from his head, and a face covered by an exoskeletal helmet. Looking at him freaked me out, so I punched him as hard as I could in the astral plane, and after he sailed off of the edge of whatever the hell he was on, Gaea grabbed me, and we rushed back to my body. Ironically enough, hardly any time had passed between my trip to the astral plane, hell, I managed to catch myself as my body was in the process of collapsing to the ground. In less than a second, I summoned my axe, which by the way, was surging with so much G-Force/Nature Force, that I was basically in the middle of a green electrical bonfire, big enough to swallow half of a skyscraper; in the words of Ruby, I AM AN ETERNAL FLAME, BABY!

I rocketed after Juggernaut, roaring like a madman, and found him at the base of a small hill. He was already in the process of getting up, but the red energy that was previously coursing through him, was now dead. His face looked dazed and confused; hell, he probably didn't even know what was going on right now, he wasn't processing it fast enough. I took comfort in that thought, as I brought my axe down on his head, the energy obliterating him before the blade could even cut through his head. I took Gaea's advice, and willed the energy explosion to flow through him, making sure every trace of him was swept away, and into the ground. The rest of the world wouldn't know it, but I felt the underground tremble, become stronger as the earth's energy redoubled though itself. After the flare died down, I stood up, and took a look at my surroundings…..f*(#!

The Great Basin Desert, was soon gonna be named the Great Basin Forest, because in every direction, lush grass covered the previously rocky ground, converting it into a lush meadow. There were full grown trees of every kind across the entire desert; believe me, even though this place was huge, I could feel the foliage. Hell, there were even different kinds of bushes, cacti, weeds, even vines growing out of the place; I had turned a desert into a small slice of the Amazon, and I was almost certain that there would be no negative repercussions for my actions. That was until I realized that their was one more baddie I had to deal with, and I felt him coming before I saw him a second later.

I'll give it to the old man, he took forever to get it up, but when he arrived, he arrived big; that sounded a lot less dirty in my head. Anyway, Magneto landed, and I gotta say, he had hit the gym big time. For one, he was wearing an Iron Man suit on steroids. It was 60 feet tall, as thick as a skyscraper, and I kid you not, my first thought when I saw it was that it looked just like the Hulkbuster suit, just with a red and purple color scheme, and Magneto's signature helmet for the head piece. Hell, it had a Unibeam, repulsor blasters in it's hands, and I was pretty sure the thing had bonus weapons, rockets, and any and all other hero killing gadgets and gizmos in it. Even worse, this thing wreaked of electromagnetism, I was getting nauseous just being near the damn thing, having to pump G-Force though my body just to make sure I didn't pass out. To put it short, the Omega Defender was legit. In retrospect, I probably should have just attacked Magneto right then, but then again, I didn't have a clue about what I was dealing with. Magneto on the other hand, didn't really seem to be all that interested in me, and not even his surroundings; his armor head moved side to side, and I could see what he was looking for, hell, I could almost see the disappointment in his face.

"_Disposed of," _he plainly said in his robotic voice. "_You have single handedly disposed of my entire Brotherhood, even the so called 'unstoppable' Juggernaut."_

The dude sounded so broken down, I actually felt bad for him. I mean, technically only two of his Brotherhood members were actually disposed, but he didn't know that, and he sounded like he had just lost all of his children.

"_I applaud you for your achievement," _he continued. "_You have taken so much from me in such a short time, yes I admit, even I am wounded by what you have done to me, my spirit has been hurt. Yet, in your chest, in your very body holds the prize that I need to ensure the domination of our entire race. The prize that will make the sacrifice of my Brotherhood worth it. I give you one last chance, give up the stone, relinquish it to me, and I promise that the death of you, your comrades, and the ones you call allies, will be fast and painless; this is my final offer."_

I paused for a moment, genuinely shocked that Magneto's best proposal was: "_Hey, i'm gonna kill you, your friends, and probably all of the heroes in the world, buuuut, and hear me out on this one, if you give me the stone, i'll kill them nicely, scout's honor!" _I actually busted out laughing, unable to contain the hilarity of Magneto's ridiculous proposal.

"Look, man," I responded, sombering up quickly. "I'm sorry I trashed your crew, I really am. I didn't wanna kill anybody, it's gonna haunt me for the rest of ever, and I have the sinking feeling that i'm gonna have to do it again. Still, you just threatened my friends, and that is something i can't let slide; so sorry, but not really, i'm gonna have to kick your ass again."

"_YOU THINK YOU KNOW SUFFERING BOY?!_" Magneto yelled at me. "_YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE THINGS I HAVE, YOU HAVE NOT SEEN YOUR RACE SLAUGHTERED, IN THE PLACE THAT THEY WERE PROMISED SANCTUARY. YOU WERE NOT HERDED LIKE CATTLE TO SLAUGHTER, FORCED TO WATCH POWERLESSLY AS YOUR PEOPLE WERE KILLED BEFORE YOU! I HAVE COME TOO FAR, LOST TOO MUCH, HAVE TOO MUCH TO LOOSE; YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME!_

"Let's see about that," I growled, as I hefted my axe, and rocketed into Magneto's Omega Defender.

I'll be the first to admit, the fight didn't really go all that well for me at first. I flew straight into the chest piece of Magneto's suit, and whacked it really hard with my axe, followed by a powerful uppercut to the face, and a dropkick straight to the chest again. Those were blows that could level tanks, created huge holes in my new garden, i'd be sure to fix those later, and after it was all said and done, Magneto barely stumbled backwards. In response, I felt my armor being pulled towards him, a magnetic pull so strong, even I couldn't fight it on a moment's notice. I was pulled in, and batted away with a hard right backhand, almost knocking me out right then, before being held in mid air by magnetism.

"_WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID, BOY?!" _Magneto taunted me. ""_SOMETHING ABOUT DEFEATING ME?!"_

His Unibeam glowed brighter, and in an almost knee jerk reaction, my body activated my G-Blazer, which somehow freed me from the magnetic grip. Still, the blast was already underway, and I instinctively made a shield construct to block the blast. Yeah…that didn't work out all that well. Magneto's blast tore through my shield like it was made of toilet paper, and basically slammed me 6 feet underground. I managed to tunnel my way out, but quickly had to go back under like a Whack-A-Mole. Why? Because Magneto nearly smashed me to bit with his big ass electromagnetic sword. I made the gravity around him intensify, holding him in place for a good second or two, came back up behind him, and after creating a barrage of G-Missiles, I rained down my righteous fury. I half expected the boomage to be able to level him, or at least I hoped it would, but was unsurprised when Magneto came charging through the green flames, blasting away at me furiously. I managed to dodge them, and even threw Magneto for a loop when I threw my axe at one of his repulsors just as it was about to fire, causing it to backfire a little, but that was about it. For about a good minute, I was reduced to dodging and fleeing. Don't get me wrong, I got some good shots in between my dodging, some just pure blasts of energy, others taking the form of missiles, fighter jets, and various birds, but my attacks were having a straight up minimal effect on his armor; hell, the guy probably had Tony Stark on the lookout for competition. Still, I eventually managed to pull a fast one on him. I barely avoided what had to be his 60th blast, and faster than he could react to it, I flew in close, created a huge sledgehammer construct, and brought it up under Magneto's headpiece as hard as I could, actually managing to topple the metal giant. I quickly summoned my axe, converted it to spear mode, and stabbed the blade deep in Magneto's Unibeam; I figured maybe that would power it down a little…not what it actually did.

Magneto's armor crackled with energy, and unleashed a small, but powerful explosive wave, one that I barely managed to get out of the way of. I dunno exactly what I did, but I was gonna chalk it up for a win; hell, it at least seemed to make Magneto uncomfortable. Still he managed to get up, even though it would've been much smarter for him to stay down and play dead. See, while he was down, I retreated a good 50 meters away, and started playing plant god again. I created two huge flowers, about 60 feet tall, each of which were basically mutated with razor sharp teeth, and packing a whole lot of acid. As Magneto got up, I willed the plants to spew out a continuous spray of acid at his armor; some of which made it through the broken centerpiece hopefully corroding some of the metal inside, because the poison was doing jack $#!+ to the outside. Still, even if it was, Magneto let on no signs of weakness, and rocketed forward, trying to punch me head on. I snapped my fingers, and a Tree Dragon, I used it on Juggernaut, exploded out of the ground, wrapped around Magneto, and started gnawing him relentlessly. I knew the dragon was doing exactly nothing, but it provided me with a good amount of time to create a couple of Tree Titans, big hulking plant monsters armed with clubs, and enough G-Force to make them pretty durable; plus, it was really funny to watch Magneto struggle and cuss, as he tried to shake my dragon off of him. He eventually did managed to get free, but by then, I had already sent my Tree Titans after him, starting the whole distraction process all over again.

"_Alright Gaea," _I said to her, going into Blitz Extreme to make sure we weren't interrupted soon. "_What are we dealing with here?"_

"_Well," _she started. "_It is a truly impressive suit. The big bulky outer armor is made mostly of an alien metal I cannot identify, the joints are made of Titanium, Lutetium, and Adamantium, all reinforced by three times. The electromagnetism in his suit is enough to span at least three solar systems, and even though you have damaged his core, the energy levels are still at about 82% power; quite frankly, the only reason you are not dead, is because he can't go all out on you without tearing the world to shreds, and because he is not physically able to use all of that energy at once, the effort alone would kill him._

"_Sounds, reasonable, now let's break his new toy."_

"_I'd recommend using your molecular destabilizer powers, it's going to take a lot of Geo-Force to use, but if you can break down the joints in his armor, it'll impair his mobility by a lot, and might even cut his power by another 20%."_

"_How do you know so much about machines, energy levels, and a bunch of other things you really shouldn't?"_

"_I'm Mother Earth, remember? I have the collective knowledge of everyone who has ever lived, or is currently alive. I can send you the notes if you'd like."_

"_Maybe later, but right now, I got more ass to kick."_

I came down from Blitz Extreme, and as if one cue, Magneto tore through my Tree Titans, locked onto me, and shot at me with not one, not two, but ten missiles, each as big as SUV's and probably Geo-Titan seeking; kicking ass would have to wait, for now, I had to focus on saving my own ass. I took to the air, and sure enough, the missiles followed.

"_Perhaps the definition of kicking ass has changed in recent moments," _Gaea said, making fun of me. "_But this hardly counts as taking the fight to your opponent."_

"_It's called faking," _I retorted. "_I could've, and will easily redirect those missiles, but right now, let's build up that G-Force I need, I wanna break that discount Hulkbuster in pieces."_

"_So violent, I love it!"_

I willed the my G-Blazer to surge with more power, and as Gaea also spoonfed me energy, I had to up my speed by a lot, to make sure the missiles didn't explode prematurely, because I was basically just one big jumbo beach ball of energy.

"_This is enough Geo-Force," _Gaea finally said after about 30 seconds of buildup. "_Now, how do you plan to deal with the missiles?"_

"_Just watch me work," _I responded.

I focused on the nature patch down below, where Magneto was still shooting missiles at me, now we were up to thirty, willed the plants underneath Magneto to surround him, and take the form of a giant Boa Constrictor. Then, I made my body swallow all of the energy around me, which felt like chugging two gallons of water, and did a dive bomb towards Magneto, making all of the oncoming missiles turn around, and along with the other ten, soar into him faster than he could even break free of my plant snake. The explosion was the stuff of dreams…..and lawsuits. Basically a big purple flare of electromagnetism, that after was all said and done, left a crater big enough to bury five perfectly good satellites on top of each other, and still have +10 feet of space to bury it under. From the looks of it, Magneto's suit sustained some significant damage, but not enough to do anything severe; that was my job. While Magneto was still dazed and confused, I flew as quickly as I could, slammed into the ground all epic like with my fist striking the dirt, and in a split second, I willed all of the energy inside of me to erupt under Magneto in a huge flare, commanding it to destroy the molecular bonds in the exploitable metals in his suit. Gaea must have had a whole platter of the stuff on standby, because instead of a simple flare big enough to level a few skyscrapers, a burst of G-Force, big enough to swallow a whole football stadium erupted out of the ground, probably shooting off the biggest flare in the history of ever; I was so gonna make the news for this, hope they got my good side. After the flare died down, I quickly did a scan of Magneto's armor, and let me tell you, the arm and leg joints were only just holding together. His energy regulators were f*(# $, and using my X-Ray vision, I could actually see that that G-Splosion, official name, had tore through a good two layers of Magneto's inner padding. In other words, he was literally a few layers away from me breaking inside and taking him out. He looked like he wanted to shoot me, or something stupid like that, but I was having none of it. I raised my fists, and two thick Tree Cables shot out of the ground, wrapped around the Omega Defender's legs, and went inside the knee joints. After snaking their way through the armor's infrastructure, I willed them to make thorns, thick enough to impale buses, extend from their lengths, and basically rend through more of Magneto's inner armor. Still, I didn't stop there, I willed the Tree Cables to surge with G-Force, lighting Magneto's precious little toy up from the inside, causing it to spark, explode in some places, and even make some pieces of the outer armor crumble off. I kept up the surge for a good five seconds, and probably would've kept it up for as long as it took to take the suit down, but Magneto was having none of it. He roared, and a burst of electromagnetism came out of his suit, frying most of my Tree Cables, although the thorns were still firmly lodged in his suit. After that, he just went blasting away wildly, releasing missiles and repulsor blasts like there was no tomorrow; I did the smart thing, and flew out of that crater, knowing that I had to get this fight back in the open.

Once I was out of the crater, I quickly outstretched my arms, used my earthbending powers to lift another huge lump of rock, about the size of a gas station, charge it with enough G-Force to put a thousand RPGs to shame, and as soon a Magneto reared his ugly suit, I hurled the land mass at him, and watched the fireworks. Seriously, the explosion wasn't as massive as the G-Splosion, but it was something to see, especially Magneto's 60 foot, 500,000 ton ass careening into the ground, tumbling and cussing, as his suit got more and more f*( # up. I sensed that his suit was nearly done, and even though I could have simply played it safe, used tactical strikes, and wait for his armor to run itself into the ground, that would be very boring for me; besides, this moment was so good, setup so perfect, that I simply could not let it slip by. First, I tapped into Blitz Extreme, knowing that this would take a lot of effort to pull off, and charged myself up with as much G-Force as I could use, even going just a little over the limit. Once I was lost in the tremendous energy, I willed all of the plant life I had created to come towards me, and envelope the 60 foot energy sphere in a cocoon of tree stuff. Finally, I willed the rocks around me to do the same, and after focusing hard on the Combat Avatar I wanted to be, I re-arranged the energy, plants, and rocks into a solid body, and after it was completed, I leapt towards Magneto, ready to end this once and for all. What was my Combat Avatar you may ask? Well, just imagine a Triple Threat armor, 60 feet tall, in the shape of the Hulk, equipped with an Iron Man suit from the neck down, carrying Thor's hammer, and Captain America's shield; I used some extra G-Force to decorate it with green stripes and a star. Magneto was already up, and even though I was only looking at his battle armor, I was pretty sure he was $#!++!^&amp; himself in there.

"What do ya think?!" I taunted him. "Kinda brings a whole new meaning to 'Avengers Assemble', huh?!"

Magneto didn't say a thing, he simply summoned his electromagnetic sword, as well as a huge red shield, highlighted with purple edges, also surging with electromagnetism. He couldn't fly at me, his thrusters were too damaged, but we both charged at each other all fierce-like, and that was just as satisfying. Ironically enough, this time I wasn't the one with the disadvantage. For starters, I cranked up the gravity to X30, which was hard enough without the strain of keeping this Avatar together; and Magneto's suit was in no condition to resist that much gravity. I batted his sword away with my shield, dented his his shield with a hard swing of my hammer, and blasted him in the chest with my Unibeam, sending him sprawling backwards. Magneto tried to get back at me with a counter Unibeam, but was it weak as f*(#. I simply blocked it with my shield, jumped into the air, and threw my shield at his head, making a really cool BONK! sound off of it. I twirled my hammer, and either by my force of will, or the placebo of the hammer, my Combat Avatar was not falling; then again, I did build in thrusters to the suit. Magneto did exactly what I thought he would, and launched a huge volley of missiles at me, unfortunately for him, I was a big fan of Thor. I roared, and again, this was a placebo thing, but I basically summoned a thunderstorm of G-Force from the sky, completely trashing his arsenal, and even pelting him with a good few bolts of G-Force. While he was stumbling, I twirled my hammer even faster, thrusted it at Magneto, while holding onto the strap handle, and I rocketed into him at Mach 3. I hit him right in the chest piece, causing his armor to surge uncontrollably again. Then, while using my left hand to fire repulsor blasts every now and then, I straight up went ham on Magneto's suit. Like I said, the gravity was impairing him by a lot, and I milked that advantage for all it was worth, basically jumping, or flipping around his attacks, striking him with my hammer as hard as I could, again and again, shooting him with repulsor blasts, missiles, machine gun fire, and just basically scraping his suit piece by piece.

"_NOW GEO-TITAN!" _Gaea slammed into my head after a minute of beating the hell out of Magneto. "_HIS ENERGY REGULATORS ARE BLOCKED COMPLETELY, USE THE GEO-FORCE TO OVERLOAD IT; MAKE THAT MONSTROSITY GO BOOM!"_

Ok, I was definitely rubbing off on her, because no way Mother Earth says 'make it go boom'. Still, I took her advice, and after batting Magneto away with the side of my hammer, I smashed it into the ground, willing the G-Force under Magneto to erupt into another G-Splosion. Yeah, Gaea wasn't kidding around when she said I was gonna make Magneto go boom. As soon as the G-Splosion hit, it was like a dam being busted open. A starburst of green and purple energy shot into the air in a massive beam; it would've been pretty to look at, what if not for the fact that Magneto was probably dead. Luckily, that was not the case. As the suit exploded one last time, as in like, Michael Bay exploded into little bitty pieces, Magneto was shot into the air, after which, I caught him in my fist, and flung him to the ground. One has to ask how a little man could control such a big suit, but then again, I couldn't judge. Anyway, now came the tricky part. See, Magneto was still sporting his electromagnetic body shield, and I was not about to go round 13 with this guy. I balled my right fist, and slammed it into him hard; his body shield flickered. I punched him again; his body shield flickered off. I couldn't punch him that hard again, otherwise i'd crush him into a paste. Instead, I slightly mashed him with the same force one would apply to crush a gnat, before absorbing my Infinity Hulk Armor, official name, into myself; Gaea said that the suit was so good, i should've been able to bust it out at anytime, and I was totally on board with that. Once on the ground, I summoned my axe, cut through what was left of Magneto's armor, the one on his body, and flung it away; no more electromagnetism from other planets for him. Next, I reached out to the G-Force pods, and in a flash, Toad, Mystique, and Blob were lying unconscious next to their leader. I quickly cuffed them, extracted the stone from my chest, which was like performing heart surgery on myself without anesthetic, and put it in a container.

"_An impressive battle, Geo-Titan," _Gaea congratulated me. "_Perhaps this can be the start of a long and beautiful partnership."_

"_Maybe," _I said. "_But I gotta read the paperwork first, have my agents look at it, and negotiate terms."_

"_How comical. Oh, and not to rain on your victory, but you kinda trashed the earth here, it's kinda bothering me, like an itch, can you fix it please?"_

"_Sure…..how?"_

"_Just make a wave of Geo-Force explode under the ground with intentions to heal, everything else will fall into place."_

I did as she said, willing a huge surge of G-Force to manifest in my hand, before slamming into the ground. I didn't see most of it, but I could kinda feel the earth healing, like I had given it a flu shot that was doing it's magic instantaneously. Still, the desert went back to being a forest again, and I was probably not gonna fix that any time soon. With all the loose ends tied up, I activated my communicator, and got Fury on the horn.

"Yo, Fury," I said. "You there?"

"Affirmative, Super-G," he said. "Report, and it had better be good."

"Actually, it's Geo-Titan, i've had a name change. Look, i'll explain back at base, but it's way too long, and way too epic of a story to tell over a watch. All you need to know right now, is that I rounded up the bad guys, and I have the stone."

"Good work, a transport is on it's way to collect you and the Brotherhood, stay there and try not to blow anything else up; seriously, you've already caused five million dollars in collateral."

"Way to guilt trip, Fury."

He cut off the communication, and I was just about to pop a squat on the floor and wait to get picked up, until I realized something important.

"_Gaea," _I thought to her. "_Can you use the G-Force to transport objects from one place to another?"_

"_Of course," _she responded. "_What did you have in mind?"_

"_Me and Storm-Lord left our jackets at the dance, plus we all left our free tablets there. Can you teleport them straight to the S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary."_

"_Uhh...sure, why not?"_

"_Thanks. OH $#!+!"_

"_What's wrong?!"_

"_The people at the party, we weren't there with them, what if they-"_

"_Oh, don't worry about them, i've already altered their minds; they think you and your friends have been with them the whole time."_

"_Wow, that's convenient, thank you."_

"_Anytime."_

Now that all the loose ends were tied up, I could finally relax; that was until I heard a cough. Magneto sputtered to life, and by the looks of it, was trying to blast at me with his now turned off electromagnetism.

"Give it a rest, gramps," I told him. "You won't be doing anything with metal, except being behind bars, and even then they'll probably end up being really hard plastic."

"YOU FOOL!" he shouted at me. "YOU HAVE DOOMED US ALL TO EXTINCTION! WHEN DOOM COLLECTS THE STONES, HE WILL WIPE US ALL OUT, DENY US A PLACE IN HIS NEW WORLD! YOU HAVE DOOMED OUR ENTIRE RACE TO OBLIVION!"

"Dude, relax! In case you haven't been paying attention, I just kicked you and your sorry excuse for a team's asses…ALONE! I'm just a rookie here, I didn't even have my whole team to back me up, and I still beat you. Yeah, I know Doom's a big deal, but so am I, and so is the rest of my team. No races are gonna be going extinct anytime soon, not on my watch; whatever Doom has planned, me and my friends are gonna stop it, you can believe that."

Magneto laughed.

"I will always admire the youth of this generation. So blind, so naive to the truth. You are a boy playing in a man's war... you shall soon see for yourself that Doom is nobody to trifle with."

"Like I said, neither am I."

I heard the sound of a jet, about two miles out, it would be arriving in about a minute. I used the G-Force to wrap Magneto and friends in pods, and lifted them off of the ground.

"Time to go," I said. "Hopefully your cell will have a nice view, i'll put in a good word for ya."

The jet landed a few feet away from us, and with the help of a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, we got the Brotherhood situated in stasis, and after buckling up, were on our way back to the Helicarrier.


	16. Chapter 16: Bonding

**Chapter 16: Bonding**

The ride back to S.H.I.E.L.D. was surprisingly fast. Seriously, we were in Nevada, and I was expecting an at least four hour flight, but the guys up front must've really been mashing the gas on this one, cuz in just a little over an hour, we were already coming down for a landing at HQ. Once the jet touched down, the loading deck opened, and a squad of heavily armed agents came inside to escort The Brotherhood to their cells. I was gonna see if I was needed, but at the edge of the crowd, I saw Agent Coulson look directly at me, and I knew I had a different destination for me. I quickly got off the jet, made my way over to him, and gave him the canister; hopefully the stone wouldn't fly away this time. Coulson looked at me, looked at the canister, and started walking back to the Helicarrier entrance.

"And here was me hoping we'd actually get a quiet night," he said while escorting me inside.

"Well, you know," I responded. "Sometimes surprises come with the job description."

"Nevertheless, good work, Geo-Titan."

"Wha-, how'd you-"

"Heard it over the communication lines, catchy name by the way."

"Thanks….so what now?"

"You know the drill. We have to debrief you, get an in depth report on the circumstances of your battle, and uh…..new abilities."

I went silent on that last comment; I could read between the lines. It was the same type of line delivery that my parents gave me when they found out about my powers; especially mom. That same, '_this isn't a good thing, but let's wait and see if it'll get better' _type of undertone, that always made me feel guilty for being…well, me.

Anyway, Coulson and I remained silent for the rest of the way to the meeting room, which was like a five minute walk, and an entire flight of stairs down. Using my X-Ray vision, I could already see that Jason and Allyson were already waiting inside, still in their battle suits, along with Nick, Hill, and Kennedy. They didn't look all to happy, but then again, the party don't start till Grant walks in. Coulson handed me the canister.

"Might soften them up a little bit," he explained. "Besides, i'm pretty sure they want proof that the stone is back at HQ, you…it, gave us quite a scare."

"Thanks, Coulson," I responded, shaking his hand. "I just might live to see the next day."

He smirked, took a long walk around a short corner, and after taking a deep breath, I walked inside the meeting room, not even bothering to try for some comedic relief. Yeah, it was almost as bad as I pictured it. For one, Jason and Allyson looked like hell. Their faces brightened up enough, but Allyson got demolished by Magneto, and Jason was essentially one-shot by him; their morale was a little on the low side. Still, they looked glad to see me, and probably would've jumped up to hug me, if not for the super serious meeting that was taking place. Speaking of which, Fury and company were either really pissed, impressed, or frightened; hell their faces were almost meme worthy. Fury kept his eye on me as I sat down, and seeing as I couldn't really think of a good way to start the conversation, I simply put the canister on the table, and flicked it to him. He caught it without breaking his composure, and even rotated it around in his hand for a little bit; probably checking it for authenticity.

"So," he finally said. "Geo-Titan. Catchy name, how'd you come up with that?"

"Well," I started. "It all started just after I managed to keep the team from dying by virtue of metal shards."

I quickly, or as quickly as I could, rehashed all of the stuff that I went through just a little over an hour ago; and I do mean all of it. I told Fury and company how I was a descendant of Hercules, chosen to be the champion of Gaea, why the stone flew into my chest, and of course, the major blockbuster that was my siege on the Brotherhood. The only thing I left out, was the fact that the Norn-Fates gave me a vision of the team almost getting offed by Magneto. For one, that had freaked me out, and would be a gateway to a lot of unwanted questions. Plus, the vision had proved harmless, and there was really no reason to start up more trouble. Fury seemed like he was totally cool with this info as I talked through it, but quickly rubbed his forehead, like he was having a migraine about it afterwards.

"I've dealt with some crazy stuff over the years," he said. "But this, you being the earth's champion, getting buddy buddy with her, plus being a descendant of Hercules? Dealing with HIM is already a headache; not to mention Hulk, and Thor. Now you?"

"Actually," Jason said, raising his hand. "Me too."

He spilled his guts about his divine lineage as well, even going so far as to explain the vision of the Shadow Gods, Doom's relationship with them, and his precognition of our battle with the Serpent Society. Clearly the guy was trying to take some of the heat off of me; I totally respected him for that. Then again, with the daggers Fury was giving him, maybe he should've been quiet about that for a little while longer. Still, Fury looked at the stone, and kinda realized that railing into Jason, especially after what was sure to be one of the best nights of his life was ruined, was not a productive way to improve a working relationship.

"Well," Fury started again. "You two are descendants of gods, one of whom is now the host for the personification of the earth…..any other stuff you wanna dump on this crazy train, Ms. Grace?"

"Don't look at me," Allyson said, her voice an odd mix of drowsiness and amusement. "I haven't had any gods talk in MY head; or at least not any of the polytheistic ones. Still, i'll be sure to alert you if and when they come knockin'."

"Thank you very much, that's extremely considerate."

"You're very welcome."

"Don't mock me girl, I don't like to be mocked."

Fury turned his attention back to Jason.

"Well, Delta Force, it looks like I can congratulate you on a job not completely screwed up. Not good, not great, but not a complete disaster; hell, your primary objective was to go to a Christmas Ball, and have some fun, how do you muck that up?"

"A handful of Doombots, and a Magneto could be a part of the problem," Jason said. "Not to mention the fact that there was a stone hidden somewhere underneath my school; any ideas how that got past you handy dandy EM sensor?"

That was a good shot. Even Fury showed signs of relenting, which just confirmed a nagging feeling that was taking root in the back of my mind. That stone was not supposed to be in that school, one might argue that it wasn't there to begin with; and Fury was bending over backwards inside to come up with an answer.

"It could've been a number of reasons," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Low energy levels for one, remember, we find the stones based off of their power surges. However, just as it's energy signature did register on the sensor, Magneto was already on the scene; you were already in the fire."

"Well," Allyson asked her. "How did Magneto find it before we did? I mean, he had to have flown a good distance to get to the ball, does he have better trackers than we do?"

"Not likely. Doom's gear is impressive, but not advanced enough to outmode us. It's likely that he's been using teleportation tech/spells to transport his associates to the various locations of the stones, otherwise we would be chasing our own tails trying to catch him."

"Which leads me to my next point," Fury said. "Mr. Fuller, we, by which I mean our best hackers, trackers, and everything in between, are trying to locate Doom's flying fortress, similar to the Helicarrier. I've already sent a mass notification to every abled bodied superhero and level 4 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to be ready to transport to the Helicarrier, all with intent on storming Doom's base, and retrieve the stones in his possession. As of now, the score is 3-2 in our favor; only two others are left outside either's control. When the time comes, you'll have had the most experience dealing with this, as well as enough combat time to lead the siege against Doom. My question is, are you ready to take the fight to Doom? Can I trust that you will be able to lead another strike team to victory?"

Jason looked shaken, sickly even; Fury was pressuring the guy way too much, way too soon.

"Well how about some sleep first?" I joked around. "I mean, come on Fury, it's been a long night, we're tired, ready to get some z's! Besides, he did fine last time, he'll do it again; ain't that right Storm-Lord!?"

I clapped Jason on the soldier, and he glanced at me for half a second. The message I was sending him couldn't have been any clearer: _Play it off!_

"What he said," Jason quickly responded. "I mean, it's not like we're gonna sit on our hands until the next stone pops up. Tomorrow we wake at 7, get food, and hit the gym at 8. We'll keep training, get better, get stronger, improve our fighting, and then we'll just improvise when it comes down to the rest; again, we don't know where Doom is, what his base structure is like, or how many other villains he has in his clubhouse. So, until we get some more intel, we're gonna stick with what we can do, and hopefully, get those other stones before Doom does."

Fury didn't seem to be all that on board with that plan, but he at least seemed to be able to see Jason's point of view. Plus, at least Jason was giving him a rough draft of a plan.

"Hopefully," he started. "Is not an option. Two stones is two too many. We have to obtain the other ones, and hopefully, get a lock on Doom; take him down before he gets any funny ideas. In the meantime, yeah, go train, you guys are getting better, but you need the practice. Oh, and sorry about your night, I know I made it sound like it was your fault, but I really am sorry that work got in the way of your well deserved night out."

We all nodded, saying stuff like "that's ok", or "no problem", and then took our leave; just as I walked through the door, things went nuts inside my head.

"_Coordinates are 33.56516° N, -7.59091° E,_" said some guy about four rooms down.

"_You will be expected to be able to perform-_" said a lady about two floors up.

"_This is gamma team_," said another dude an entire floor under me. "_Reporting for drop off._"

That wasn't even the worst of it. I could hear the turbines of the Helicarrier work, even through Titanium enforced walls. I could hear the deafening noise of over a million people talking, screaming, laughing, etc., even from about 10,000 feet in the air; and the noise kept getting louder, and louder, until after 30 seconds of straight up pain and confusion, it just suddenly stopped.

"Grant," Allyson said, her hand on my shoulder. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah," I quickly responded. "Just a hiccup with my powers. It's ok, i'm better now."

"You sure, man?" Jason asked me. "You looked like your head was gonna explode."

"I'm fine bro," I said. "No worries. Now let's power down, I feel like a freaking terminator squad."

We all laughed, powered down, and got on the elevator. On the ride to the third floor, I realized, or should I say processed, just how drastic the night had changed for us. I mean, here was me and Jason, looking like models in our fancy suits, and Allyson looking super sexy with her dress; who would've thought that we just got back from a fight, instead of a ball for rich kids? Speaking of which, that reminded me of something. I thought about the stuff I told Gaea to drop off at the infirmary, Jason and Allyson obviously didn't get them, and summoned them to my hand via Geo-Portal.

"Here guys," I said, giving Jason his jacket, and the tablets for him and Allyson. "It'd be a shame to let such fine stuff go to waste."

"How'd you get these?" he asked me. "Did you fly all the way back to New York just to get our stuff?"

"Nah, just told Gaea to transport our stuff in the infirmary, you know, like ya do."

"You didn't manage to get my heels too, did you?" Allyson asked me.

"Oh, right!" I said, smacking myself in the head. "You ditched them on the side of the school. Hold on for a sec."

I extended my consciousness back to the side of the school, located Allyson's heels, and warped them into my hand.

"Here you go," I said, giving them to her.

"Thanks, Grant," she said, as she quickly put them on her feet; didn't think about the fact that she was barefoot until now.

The elevator finally landed on my floor, and I made my way out, telling Allyson and Jason bye. Right before the door closed, I heard a hand stop it.

"Grant?" Jason asked me.

"Yeah?" I asked him, turning around.

"Thanks, you know, for saving us back there. Sorry you had to go through that fight all by yourself."

"Well, not entirely by himself," Allyson chimed in. "I maybe helped for a good…..one or two minutes; maybe."

We all had a small, slightly uncomfortable laugh.

"But seriously," she continued. "Thanks so much for saving us, Geo-Titan."

Damn. Her voice reeked of so much heartfelt sincerity, even I couldn't keep myself from blushing.

"No problem guys," I told them. "Now get outta here, go be cute together somewhere else, i'm going to bed."

They both went eyes wide, blushing furiously, and on that positive note, I took my leave. hopefully those star-crossed lovebirds would be able to put two and two together without me.

(Jason's Perspective)

After Grant got off on his floor, Allyson and I took the elevator back to our floor (never thought about the fact that we lived on the same floor). We didn't talk. We barely even looked at each other. Even though I wasn't running, I could feel my heart racing, my body getting hotter, my breathing getting heavier, and my thoughts becoming a jumbled mess as the elevator dinged, dropping us off on our floor. We walked together in silence, my body obeying the unspoken rule to always walk your date to her door. Finally, after what seemed like forever, we reached her room; that did not make me feel any better. My brain went even fuzzier, my heart was hammering fiercely. I wanted to say so much to her, but knew I would never have the courage to get it out.

"So..," Allyson started. "This is my stop. Thanks for the night out, Jason, I had fun."

"Me too," I blurted out. "And look, I'm sorry about everything. The jerkwads who ruined our dance, Magneto completely wrecking our night, I just-"

"Don't blame yourself for that Jason," she said, getting ever so close to me. "It wasn't your fault, sometimes things just happen, you know? None of what happened tonight changed how much I enjoyed just being a regular girl in the city, a regular girl at a party; none of it changes…it dosen't change how I feel about you."

I inhaled slightly, almost out of breath. I wanted to say something deep and meaningful too, but it came out as "uh..thanks". Still, even in the face of awful conversation skills, Allyson smiled, and turned to open her door. She looked back at me, and it looked like she was gonna wish me a good night, but then I heard something, like a crack forming in the door frame. Allyson and I looked up, and I swear to you, saw an honest to God clump of mistletoe. My brain was on red alert, like so high, wondering how the hell mistletoe just formed on top of a door frame, that I didn't even see Allyson reach out, grab my face, and pull me in for a deep kiss. Oh. My. God. It was…..life. One second, I was neck deep in worry, the next, everything was so calm and focused, my shell shocked nerves gradually fading away every second my lips were dancing with hers. We kissed for a good ten seconds, our heads rotating to either side, my hands wrapped firmly around her waist, while her hands were deep in my hair. I thought that I was golden, that it couldn't get any better than what it was now; that was until Allyson pulled me inside her room, not even breaking the kiss, and I closed the door behind us. It would take a while, but I eventually figure out who put the mistletoe in the door frame.

Quick question. Have you ever been in that position where you're so focused on what you're doing, so caught in the moment, and so determined to enjoy every second of it, that it seems like everything else in the world just becomes irrelevant, meaningless, almost like a distant dream? Well, if you've ever felt something like that, then you'll have a rough idea of how it felt while I was kissing Allyson. Her lips were warm, tender, yet still rough and challenging, like she was declaring a war of kisses. I did my best to keep up (don't usually say that anymore), yet at the same time, didn't try to overpower her; I kinda liked it when she fought for control. I dunno how long we kissed, but for a while, that's all we did, standing and kissing while clinging to each other for dear life. Was this spontaneous burst of passion an after effect of almost dying? Probably, but we'd deal with that later. Right now, I needed Allyson's warmth, the feel of her hands on my face, the taste of her spearmint, vanilla, cinnamon, cherry flavored mouth (not kidding, I could literally taste all those gum flavors). But more importantly, I felt how much she actually needed me too. We were both on edge, scared even, we needed this; after all the fighting, we just needed a small slice of peace. I moved my hands to her face, as she moved hers to my chest. I poured on the pressure of my kiss, reveling in the small moans Allyson breathed into my mouth, loving how hot and heavy her breathing was, burning even. We kissed for a bit more, before I did something so stupid, my name would be synonymous with mood killer for quite a while. See, i've never had that much experience kissing before (no, not because I suck at it!). Hell, the only girl i've ever kissed was Hannah Williams (might've told you this already, but we were a friends with benefits, but no sex, thing), and that was usually under the bleachers at football games. Anyway, the point was, i'm super behind in small gestures that are apparently common knowledge to more experienced kissers. So, when Allyson suddenly slid her tongue across my lips, I kinda gasped, opening my mouth, which was basically an invitation for Allyson to come inside; the only thing was, at the time, I had no idea that was how things went down. So, when her tongue made contact with mine, even though a small part of my brain liked it, most of it was on red alert, and I maybe, sorta, kinda, in a way that's totally not my fault, electrocuted Allyson's tongue with a small bust of voltage from my own.

"YOWW!" Allyson shrieked, pushing away from me. "Tayton! You shtocked ty thoung!"

"OH MY GOD!" I yelled. "I'M SO SORRY, I DIDN'T MEAN IT, YOU SURPRISED ME, I JUST...I MEAN….I DON'T-"

She held up a hand, stopping me dead in my tracks, and started humming the background music to "When Christmas Comes to Town", from The Polar Express. The inside of her mouth lit up for a few seconds, before dimming down. She put her hand to her tongue, and felt it for a little bit, probably trying to get the feeling back; afterwards, she turned her attention directly at me.

"I'm so sorry," I started. "I-"

She started laughing. No seriously, she was laughing at me, what the f*(#!? I was both confused, and a little offended at the same time; but Allyson reached out for a hug, and I forgot about being mad at her.

"Oh my God, Jason!" she said, still softly laughing. "You are such a dork!"

"I resent that," I said, chuckling a little. "My mom thinks i'm pretty cool."

"Oh does she?"

"Yeah, she does!"

Allyson backed up slightly, but without breaking the hug, just enough for us to see each others faces. Her eyes were so warm with compassion and happiness. Her smile, the perfect mix of innocence and seduction; I had a feeling I wasn't gonna win much fights against her, or at least non-physical ones.

"You don't have much experience with this, do you?" she asked me. "Being…passionate that is."

"You'd be the first," I said. "The first girl i've ever been passionate with."

"Really? That's surprising. I mean, you have the looks for it-"

"Accompanied by a personality as rough as sandpaper."

"You said it, not me!"

My face must've been priceless, because Allyson laughed so hard until she actually snorted.

"It's ok, Jason," she finally said, after recomposing her sexy/innocent, perfect posture, rubbing my back to make me feel better. "I was inexperienced once. We can go slow, I don't wanna rush anything if you don't feel comfortable."

Ok, wow. Not only was that the greatest act of understanding i've ever experienced, but totally backwards; usually, this is what the guy says to the girl, and maybe it was the irony, humor, or straight up feels, but I suddenly lost my jitters. I pulled Allyson in slowly, and after going 90% of the way (Hitch was a great movie), Allyson came the other ten. We kissed deeply for another few minutes, neither of us willing to let go of each other; that was until Allyson removed my jacket and vest. My heartbeat escalated a little, but I calmed down, and focused on kissing her; not wanting to accidentally fry her hands off. After a little longer, I felt Allyson's tongue dash across my mouth again, but slower, as if asking "_are you ready this time, or should I insulate my tongue before entering?" _I let her go a full circle around my lips before nodding ever so slightly, and letting her inside. I had never tongue kissed before, and while I wouldn't say I was good at it, I could say that I was learning. In the meantime, I just enjoyed the taffy taste of Allyson's tongue; the slimy, wet, somehow perfect clash of tongues, only made better as our moans of pleasure echoed in each others mouths. I completely forgot about being scared, and while I was still gonna have a semblance of politeness and restraint, I was now all into this; giving it 110%, and putting as much fire and passion into what I was doing as Allyson. We tongue wrestled with each other for at least 3 minutes. I was so outclassed though; she overpowered me, and moved my tongue in every direction she wanted it to go. Hell, I could feel her satisfaction of being in control over an inferior opponent, but I didn't care; the battle was still young, and even then, who was really winning or losing anything? As we continued, I felt my body heat up from the inside out, my mind reduced to little more than an organ whose only function was to make me feel the sensation of pleasure, my hands taking permanent residence around Allyson's back. I thought I was finally getting the hang of it (even my tongue game was improving), but as it turned out, things were only starting to heat up. Allyson's hands traced lined patterns across my chest, leaving me with a both ticklish/invigorating sensation; I wished I could do the same, but my only response was holding her tighter, kissing harder, and moaning in unison with her. She moved her hands around my collar, and unfastened my tie, breaking the kiss for a moment to bring it over my head. I looked into her eyes for a split second, and was almost scared. That innocence Allyson usually had was a glimmer, an ember in the middle of a roaring bonfire of savage lust, hunger, and thirst. Still, even though it was sudden, the look she gave me, it kicked me into high gear, and as we clashed our lips together again, I could feel flame building inside me too.

As we continued our hot, wet, sticky tonsil battle, I felt Allyson's hands move towards my collar again. Big mistake. I took control of the kiss, holding her face as I finally started to get the upper hand. I didn't think anything of it at first (I wasn't thinking of anything at all per se), but then I felt her start to unbutton my shirt. I instinctively froze, gripping Allyson a bit too tight. In response, she also stopped. It was definitely scary, like I said, I had never been in these types of waters before, but I remembered who I was with, how much I trusted her, and slowly, resumed kissing; nodding my head slightly, telling her it was ok to continue. She slowly continued to unbutton my shirt (probably cautious after my first reaction), and I eased up on the aggressive kissing, giving her some time to do her thing. After she unfastened the last button, she slowly traced her fingers up my sternum, along the length of my arms, and after prying my hands away from her face, intertwined her hands in mine and moved them down to our sides. We stayed in this position for a few more seconds, deciding to take a gentler route rather than an aggressive one; that maybe lasted for 20 seconds, then we got hot and heavy again. Allyson's hands made her way back up to my chest, and removed my shirt from the collar down. She didn't hesitate to take advantage of my bare skin, and while still keeping a sizeable advantage over our tongues, clawed at my pecs, abs, back, and everything else, like a cat at a scratching post. Again, this tickled more than hurt, I mean I was bullet resistant after all, but it was still enough to make me moan/laugh into her mouth, causing her to do the same. I'll never understand how we could be aggressive, tender, and humorous all at once. A few seconds later, I felt Allyson grab my hands again, and move them to her back. I faltered for a bit (giving her ample opportunity to force her tongue even further down my mouth), suspecting where this was going, but not knowing whether or not I was ready. Allyson seemed to sense this, and adjusted her demeanor accordingly; removing her tongue from my mouth, and wrapping her arms around my neck lovingly, as she kissed me soft and sweet. She kept at it like this for a while, not even hinting at the thought of anything else, but a few minutes later, she removed her heels from her feet, and I knew that our night was about to speed up; the only thing now, was that I was 100% ready.

I moved my hand up to her zipper, and slowly moved it down about two inches before stopping. Allyson nodded with an 'mm hmm', her kisses heating up again drastically. I inched the zipper down further, and after reaching the endpoint, Allyson reached her arms up, and I helped her remove it. I didn't think I was gonna get all animal-like, but after the first inch of contact with her bare back, the soft, tender, skin resonating with every level of pleasure my body was capable of feeling; well….let's just say I wasn't exactly as modest as a gentleman should have been.

I immediately drew her close to me, like no space between our bodies close. Her breasts pressed pleasantly against my chest, and after kissing her fiercely for a few more seconds, I moved my attention to her now exposed neck, biting, kissing, and sucking on it for dear life.

"Ohhh!" Allyson cried out, hissing like a cat. "Oh yeah…...oh God….that's it…keep going!"

Her cries of pleasure filled me with more energy than a bolt of lightning could ever give me. I grabbed her by the waist, and lifted her off the ground. She immediately wrapped her legs around me, and as we kissed with the passion of something romantic and cheesy, I pinned her against the nearest wall, alternating my attention between her neck, collarbone, and lips. Her breathing was labored, unsteady, hitched, and for the first time in this entire burst of passion, I was the one in control, Allyson was the one trying to keep up with MY whims; I was enjoying that way more than I should've. She clawed at my back, trying desperately to disrupt my focus, biting and kissing at my neck and collarbone, but I was in a mild frenzy, and her futile attempts to take control from me were to no avail (I should seriously get checked out, I may have slight control issues); besides, in addition to my extensive kissing all over her upper body, I was simultaneously poking her in her sides with my fingers, taking in her sultry flowery scent, and occasionally, moving one of my hands to her exposed thighs. Believe you me, she was a jumbled hot mess of moans, laughs, hot breathing, and gasping my name. I continued my relentless streak of pleasure, starting from her sternum, and planted a long line of kisses up to her neck, then under the chin, and finally back to her lips. She was still as good as ever with her tongue, so this time, I decided to cheat, using my super speed to outmaneuver her, and force my tongue deeper down her mouth. We stayed like that for a minute (while I was still attacking her sides and thighs); I didn't even give Allyson a chance for breath, until Allyson frantically patted me on my shoulder, essentially tapping out. I quickly unlocked my mouth from hers, and moved them back to her collarbone, nipping at it lightly.

"Oooh!" she moaned out, her breath heaving, trying to take in as much air as she could. "The bed!"

I didn't need to hear anymore. I scooped her up bridal style, kissing her with a roughly balanced mix of intense passion, and tender affection, and plopped her on the bed while quickly climbing over her and pinning her arms over her head. I traced my fingers down the lengths of her arm, using an EXTREMELY light pinch of static in my fingertips (like half as powerful as a static shock). I also traced my fingers down her neck, sternum, abdomen, thighs, right to the edges of her feet; again, while I wasn't hurting her, I was definitely treading lightly on her sensitive nerves, causing her to laugh, moan, and occasionally cry out. Hell, by the time I got to her feet, there was no need to pin her down, she was on Cloud 9, trembling and lightly spazzing. I looked on her with great lust, and now that I mention it…she definitely paid a visit to Victoria's Secret! She was wearing a dark red lace bra with matching panties, and believe me, that image, mixed in with the matching nail polish, makeup, and the look of her being consumed with pleasure and ecstasy (shivers); well, let's just say "self-control" was the order of the night. I traced my way back up to Allyson's abdomen with a trial of slow kisses up her legs. Oh, and because I had outlined her body in a sheet of static, my eyes were kinda picking up a resonating sense where her most sensitive nerves were located; basically, I cheated, and made myself a map of Allyson's erogenous zones, and i'd be lying if I said I didn't take advantage of that. I stayed mostly in her abdomen, kissing and licking it fiercely, while keeping a good hold on her thighs. I must've been doing something right, cuz Allyson gripped my hair like it was a blanket.

"Mmmm!" she moaned. "Oh yeah, get it, get it, get it, mmmmm, oh yes, aww f*(#..."

I kept up my efforts, reveling in Allyson's cries of pleasure, and occasional swears. After a minute, I resumed my trial up to her face, slowly kissing and biting at her pressure points. I kissed up her chest, moving my hands up to fondle with her breasts for a minute or so, and found my way back to her mouth. Kissing while being on top of her was different in a totally awesome way. Maybe it was the feeling of her under me, the way our bodies were naturally pressed against each other, the way she moved her hands soothingly along my back, arms, and shoulders, or sometimes just grabbing a fistful of hair and pushing me down; whatever it was, all I can say was that it struck all the right notes, and I was lost in the feeling. In an unspoken agreement, we were taking it down a few notches, adopting a fast, but steady pace of lip locking. Tongue was rarely involved, and when it was, it was only for a brief moment. Still, Allyson seemed to enjoy it, and as she moved her attention to the sides of my face, kissing them with small moans, I hungrily kissed and sucked on her neck, almost losing it every time I felt a moan resonate through it. Allyson lifted my head up over hers, and kissed me hard, pushing me up slightly. I let her up, and as she gripped my face, I wrapped my arms around her, embracing her as she wrapped her legs around me, sitting on my lap as we kissed each other fiercely. If she was trying to suck all of the oxygen from my lungs, i'll give her props on a near miss, cuz I definitely had to suck face a lot harder in order to keep conscious. I moved my hands up her back, and they found a way to the clasp of her bra….that's when we both froze. I guess I never thought of it while we were in action, but the road we were on led to something beautiful, exciting, and memorable; but at the same time, something we couldn't take back. We looked into each others eyes, that fear crawling back up in my chest, and I knew I couldn't do it, I just couldn't. I hugged her tight, and ducked my head under her chin. We stayed like that for a few minutes, just holding each other, trying to slow our breathing down, and thinking of what the hell we were doing.

"Sorry," I finally whispered to her. "I'm sorry."

"It's ok," she whispered back to me, combing her hands through my dreads. "Besides, it was me too, not just you. In any case, I still enjoyed myself, I enjoyed this…..I like you Jason. I like like you."

"I like like you too, Allyson." I said (who says like like anymore?), looking straight into her eyes.

"Buuuut…?" she asked me, raising an eyebrow along with her smirk.

"But….it's just….I can't...with you…..right now. Believe me, i'd like to, and hopefully we can, but right now, while we're surrounded by aliens, monsters, gods, magic, and evil dictators? Right now, we need to focus on that, on being a team that can fight together, and if we're too focused on keeping each other safe, especially in battle, when we both can look after ourselves, we'll put each other in danger, Grant too."

"Ever the leader boy scout."

She laughed, sighed, and gave me a kiss to the forehead.

"But seriously," she continued "I understand, and I really am sorry if I rushed this. I just….i've been scared. Ever since I got on this stupid flying battleship, i've been scared, excited, terrified, and exhilarated all at once. You….well, you had a particular stability about you, in theory, that's kinda why I locked on to you. Don't get me wrong, Grant's ok, but I can sense a womanizer, even a former one, right from the get go. Besides, football players were never my type anyway."

I laughed, and Allyson laughed with me.

"For what it's worth," I started again. "I kinda locked on to you because of how different you were. I mean, I can sense a popular girl, and while you definitely are, there was a sorta downplay about you that i've never seen in anyone before; then again, after watching you mow down zombies like it was nothing? That beautiful fearlessness perfectly embodied? It was a no brainer; are you sure you're not mad at me?"

"Of course not!" she said. "In fact, I kinda find it attractive that a guy would deny sex. I mean, i've never had sex before,yes really, despite how good I am the stuff that comes before it, i'm still a virgin. Yeah I was willing to have it tonight, but the fact that you were the one who halted it….that's something special, especially from a guy."

"Oh...well…thanks. I guess….I guess i'll just-"

"You don't HAVE to go, Jason. We may not be having sex, but i'm not gonna force you to take the walk of shame back to your room, especially when you didn't even go all the way. You can still share my bed, we can cuddle and sleep for the night. Tomorrow, we go back to business."

"I like that plan better."

"It comes with a condition though."

"Oh? What is it?

"One more round of kissing."

"Is that what you call it?! I thought we were sparring with our mouths."

"That's one way to put it, but come on, you pretty much had your way with me back there; let me at least go out with a consolation prize."

Her eyes were big, seductive, and pleading; there was no way I could say no.

"Deal," I said, as I reached for her face, kissed her tenderly, and gently laying her down on her back.

For a good 2-3 minutes, we just kissed in a nice soft fashion, no tongue, no restraining, no pressure points. I thought that was gonna be all it would amount to, but apparently, Allyson had a score to settle with me. Her hands were already rubbing and softly clawing at my hair and back, so I didn't think anything of it at first; plus, my body was already hot and sweaty (both of ours), so I didn't think much of the extra heat flowing through me. In other words, all of the pieces were in perfect position for a sexual ambush (not the best term to describe it), and Allyson took advantage of that in its entirety.

Quicker than I could've anticipated it, I felt a burning (but not scalding) sensation claw down my back. I was so caught off guard, I gasped right in Allyson's mouth, who quickly wrapped her legs around my waist, grabbed me by my shoulders, and flipped me on my back. Her face was glowing with a triumphant smile (and a light layer of Sun Energy). She quickly consumed my mouth again, and I felt something loosen my belt buckle, and yank my pants right off of me, which meant that Allyson was somehow so fast that she managed to de-pants (and de-shoe) me without letting go of my arms, or she was wicked good at making solar constructs. As she greedily took my mouth, I could feel her grip on me getting stronger, the strength in her arms increasing by twice as much and rising; hell, when I stole a glance at them, her veins were literally coursing with golden light. This time, she was the one driving me wild as she subdued my tongue with hers, attacked my pressure points with solar tipped fingertips, which stung in a good way, and rubbed her burning hands all over my chest, which made me moan for dear life into her mouth. Between kisses, I was allowed maybe 20 seconds or so between the times she moved her attention away from my mouth to focus on my neck, pecs, and abs, and the sides of my face; kissing and licking them, giving me the feeling of being doused in soft, liquidy heat.

"MMMMM!" I nearly screamed out. "Awww! Oh my God! Oh s#!+, f*(#, ohhhh, easy, please, easy!"

"Easy!?" Allyson loudly murmured into my abs, before starting to trail hot kisses up my chest.

"Where was that easy?" she said between kisses. "Where was it...while you...were savaging my thighs...consuming my stomach…eating up my neck…and trying to swallow my mouth?

She licked and kissed the side of my face, scratching down my chest with her solar claws (that should be official).

"No, I don't think I will take it easy." she said, her eyes almost laughing at my pleas for mercy. "In fact, I think i'll play with you for a little while longer."

She gripped my face, and took my mouth with no mercy. While it was fun to see her in control, plus I kinda liked being dominated a little, I decided to make her earn her win. I focused on making voltage course through my muscles, making my body a hell of a lot stronger. Just as Allyson was getting comfortable, I gripped her face, kissed her harder, and forced her up to a kneeling position. She instinctively wrapped her legs around me, and redoubled her efforts to suck the oxygen from my face, meaning I had to do the same and more. I tipped my hands and fingertips in a light static aura, and scratched down her back (not too hard, not even remotely hard). She gasped, and instead of forcing my tongue down her throat, I went straight to her neck, putting static on my lips, and burrowed into it. She moaned something fierce, her strength waning for a bit, but managed to keep herself in the game by scratching up and down my back, forcing me to relinquish my grip on her neck, after which she scooped my mouth back in hers. We continued, and continued for what had to be at least an hour and a half. Our glorious mix of savage lustful kissing, licking, grinding, and scratching. The static and sun, lit up the room until we just couldn't any more. I fell back, and Allyson collapsed on top of me, wrestling with me, and laughing furiously while we scrambled to get under the covers. Allyson straddled me again, her eyes lit up like an excited cat. Her breathing was all over the place, I could basically feel her heart beat through my chest, but she almost seemed like she could catch a second wind. I quickly reached up, and wrapped her up in a deep, slow, passionate kiss. She still breathed heavily into my mouth, so I went slower, trying to adjust to her breathing, trying to steady it. It took a good minute, but eventually she slowed down, and gently set her head on top of my chest.

"Does this mean I win?" she whispered to me.

"I'm pretty sure it's a draw," I responded.

She shrugged.

"Fine by me," she said.

She moved to the side, gave me one last kiss, and we embraced each other again, as sleep basically swallowed us up. I thought there was no way that life could take this moment away from me, but life had dreams, and sometimes dreams can f*(# with you.

My consciousness left my body, phased through the Helicarrier, and shot off into the distance. I flew at what had to have been Mach 10 over the Atlantic Ocean, up to the point where I couldn't see a thing, but could sense the water below me. I maybe thought to myself for half a second "_Not in the water, not in the water!", _before I suddenly stopped, froze for three seconds, and was shot straight down in the middle of the Atlantic. I held my breath as I was shot down into the water, traveling so fast, it was a wonder I didn't crumple like a can from the pressure. Then again, I held my breath for five minutes before remembering the fact that I was dreaming, and didn't need to breathe (duh!). Anyway, as I shot down deeper into the ocean like a torpedo (still couldn't see for $#!+), my vision began to ripple and change. One second I couldn't even see an inch in front of me, a few seconds later, my vision began to clear up, everything was layered in a shade of light blue, and I could see everything for miles; then again, I don't exactly know if I wanted to see anymore. Look, i'm not afraid of the water, I love going to the beach, but drowning is one of my biggest fears. So when my vision cleared up, and I saw myself at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by reefs, hundreds upon hundreds of fish, and the sight of nothing but water in every direction, I kinda had a small panic attack. I quickly got over it by remembering this wasn't real, but I still was on edge. Moving on, my body drifted at about 100 mph along the ocean floor, and I gotta say, now that I was under here, it wasn't so bad. As I torpedoed along the ocean floor, I was kinda dazzled by the various rocks, reefs, and long stretches of sand that shot through my vision. I passed through a few creepy trenches, and could've sworn that I saw an eel as big as my body swim by, but that's besides the point. The swim through the trench (it was a long ass trench!) lasted a good 5-6 minutes. As I swam by, I noticed how I seemed to be going further and further down; as in like, deeper than anyone has ever been in the ocean ever. Again, I have to point out that I wasn't affected by the pressure of the ocean, simply because I was not physically here. However, I could feel the potential pressure that was around me, and knew with complete certainty that if I actually was here, i'd be so totally dead now.

As I finally made it through the trench, I got this beautiful, damn near breathtaking, view of what had to be underwater mountains. An entire range of extremely tall trenches combined in one area, gave off the illusion of the Rocky Mountains, all under the sea; each of them shimmering (from my point of view) as the water swayed back and forth around them. Hell, the mountains seemed to be magical, because rays of blue energy were shooting across the bases of the trenches, lighting them up beautifully in the night; that was what I thought until I actually got a look at what those blue rays actually were. One of em' shot super fast into the air, followed by another one that shot directly through one of the trench rocks, blowing off the top, like a bottle rocket. Now, I was no expert on underwater dealings, but I was pretty good at spotting fights (high school will do that to ya), and this had the words 'midnight brawl' written all over it. As if hearing me, and wanting to prove me right, a huge explosion, one that destroyed an entire mountain, reducing to to pebbles, erupted. The flash was almost blinding, but amidst the flare, I was able to see a small figure, roughly humanish in appearance, come rocketing out of it like a bat out of Hell. The figure started to plummet in my direction, and I nearly rushed out to help it (or get out of the way), before remembering that I wasn't really here; there was nothing I could do for it. Too bad for him (it was a him); the poor soul crashed at the base of the mountain I was standing over. I floated down next to him, and was not at all surprised to find that this thing wasn't really all human. He was about 7 feet tall, built like a NFL player, and was even sporting some pretty long dreadlocks. Still, this guy was blue (not Nightcrawler dark blue, but more of a sky blue). He had weird, but kinda cool looking, white tattoos all over his face, arms and chest. None of them looked like anything in particular, just lines that sometimes ending forming squares, zig zags, and circles, the guy actually had the same etchings in his dreadlocks. I noticed that he had talons absently growing and retracting from his fingertips, also some wicked sharp fangs in his mouth. He was wearing some type of black and gold chest armor that looked like a bunch of fish scales weaved together, which matched with his black pants, that I assume was the underwater equivalent of leather. His all white eyes were glazed over (if that's even possible) and weary. He was bleeding through four pierced points in his chest armor, and his right thigh looked like it had shark bites in it. This guy had been in the thick of whatever this was for a long time, and it didn't look like he was gonna last much longer. Even worse, he didn't really have the expression of a person trying to run away from a fight, but someone who was trying to get help, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of his team. Whoever this guy was, he was obviously a soldier, and I was looking at his desperate attempts to win the war for his side. I found myself rooting for him to get away, to get that help he needed, and to come back with a Lord of the Rings style cavalry screaming "WHAT'S UP NOW, B!+(#^$!?" In retrospect, I was probably the one that jinxed his small, if even that, chances for survival/success.

A second later, five blue streams of energy darted out from under the rocks. I almost thought they were some sort of underground heat seeking missiles, cuz those things were flying out in five different directions, and turning in perfect unison, making a perfect arcing formation, heading straight for Eric (I named him Eric. What?! I didn't know who he was, and I couldn't just call him light blue guy!). Eric looked like he was down for the count, hell, I didn't even think he was aware that he was getting shot at; boy was I wrong. Right before the missiles could end Eric, he quickly grabbed the base of the rock I was just on, shot up wards like a ballistic missile, and did a flip in the water that got him into a position giving him a downward view of the mountain, which was crumbling like a house of cards. His talons were fully outstretched, his fangs were bared, and he was actually hissing and roaring at the same time; impressive in my book. Not a second after the missiles had crashed into the ground, something, lots of somethings shot up at Eric…..and they were DEFINITELY not missiles. For starters, they were obviously a water based form of life, and these things were so far from human looking it was actually scary. They were about the same height as Eric, with dark grey skin, gills clearly visible from the sides of their torsos, and blood red eyes. Their faces looked like elongated piranha heads (with the teeth to match), and their hands and feet were heavily webbed and equipped with talons. There wasn't really anything else to them, other than the fact that they were all glowing with an aura of blue energy; that spelled trouble like so hard. Three of the five piranha men shot straight at Eric, who managed to dodge two of them, roll right over the third one's back while singing his talons into it, but quickly got trucked by the fourth one, who quickly sent Eric crashing into another rock. The piranha man tried to bite Eric's head off, but Eric quickly moved out of the way, and as hard as he could, bit into the piranha man's neck. He savagely thrashed his head around, making the water around him swirl with blood (i'll never drink Kool-Aid again), and after thrashing around for a good 10 seconds, way longer than it should've taken for any other beast, Eric ripped the piranha man's trachea out, and quite literally ripped his head off with his bare hands (can anyone spell fatality?). The remaining four piranha men ambushed Eric, but that wouldn't turn out to be all that big of an advantage for them. Eric shot upwards again, evading them all, and as one of them recovered and shot straight up at him, he grabbed his head, flipped over him, summoned a sword that appeared after a quick flash of gold, and stabbed him in the back. Apparently a stab to the heart wasn't a killing blow for these guys, cuz the piranha man thrashed around trying to get at Eric's head; Eric simply brought the sword up, vertically slicing his head in half, but still, these guys were kinda resilient. The remaining three tried rushing him again, but after a few quick whirls, stabs, and slashes, they were all missing heads, limbs, and adding to the death Kool-Aid swirl. I let myself believe that Eric was in the clear, and that he would get away safely, but then I heard something that sounded like rapid fire cannons; I looked up and saw not one, three, five, but twenty shots of blue energy flying at Eric. Each one represented a piranha man (obviously), and in the state Eric was in, it didn't look all that good for him right now.

For what it's worth, the dude put in work! He immediately turned on the jets, swimming and outmaneuvering his attacker with almost unchallenged ease. He was extremely brutal in his fighting methods, resorting to sinking his fangs/claws into his opponents, ripping out handfuls of their vital organs (sometimes ripping out parts of spines), using his sword (which could also convert into a trident) to impale heads, slice of limbs, and decapitation, lots of decapitation. Granted, he had to earn every kill, cuz these piranha men were definitely no pansies. For every bite, slash, and stab he got on one of them, they inflicted a bite or stab in return; one actually managed to get him in a headlock, and stab him with his talons, before Eric elbowed him in the ribs, flipped over him as another piranha man barreled into his friend, and while they were both occupied, threw his trident through both of them. It was a blood fest for both sides, but Eric did eventually manage to brutally dismember all of his attackers, even if he wasn't looking all that well from the fight himself. There were twice as many puncture wounds in his armor, his legs had nasty gashes on them, and he was bleeding from a bite wound to the right shoulder. I honestly didn't think he'd even have the strength left to sit, let alone swim, but he had heart, like lots of heart He tried to keep going, but after he got blasted in the back with a hard ray of energy, I knew it was over.

Eric lied barely conscious on the sea floor, and just behind him, a mysterious figure with a gun was swimming towards him. After swimming closer, I could see most of him, and I didn't know whether to be impressed, scared, or laugh. The guy was blue, just like Eric, but lacked the facial/body tattoos. He was wearing a full body battle suit, kinda like mine's, just golden, and with fish scale/fin designs on it. He wore a golden helmet that was molded like a sea serpent's head, that had a visor coming down just short of his nose. This guy was definitely loaded with some state of the art gear to. His hands had some kind of repulsor technology, he was equipped with a golden sword by his side, two laser guns (one was already in his hand), a trident on his back, and a couple of knives strapped to the sides of his exposed biceps, and the side sheathes in his golden armor boots. The guy kinda looked like a blue skinned Chinese man, and had the demeanor of a person who's usually on top of the game; why did I have the sinking feeling that we'd end up fighting sooner or later? Anyway, the golden armor guy swam over to Eric, drew his trident, and stuck him in the side of his lower back, lightning the trident up with voltage, and probably deep frying Eric's organs. Eric screamed a horrible cry of agony, and thrashed around wildly. At that moment, I wanted the dream to end. I knew a torture session when I saw one (movies), and I was squeamish about that type of stuff; killing was easy (in theory that is), torture was a whole different ball game. Still, my dream kept me in the loop, and I had to endure Eric's cries of pain for another 10 seconds, before golden armor guy decided to stop. Eric's breathing was rapid and painful looking, he was starting to cough up blood, and his body wouldn't stop convulsing and spazzing. I will say to his credit, when golden armor guy flipped him over, he tired for a desperate trident summon n' thrust, but his attempt was dodged, and he was shot with a small burst of voltage, sending him back to the ground in an even worse state of spazzing. Golden armor guy stomped his right foot on Eric's chest, and began to slowly taunt him.

"Janus, Janus, Janus," he started, his voice a cold, cocky, ruthless, slur. "How far we have fallen from grace, my friend. I know not where you were heading, usually you are not one to stray from the battlefield, and I hate not knowing things. So here is what is going to happen. You will tell me everything you know about your mission, Namor's attack and defensive maneuvers, and anything else I may need to ensure the conquest of Atlantis. In return, your death will be swifter than a second. Keep in mind, I WILL get the information out of you. You WILL die today. But you have a choice between giving it to me willingly, or giving me the pleasure of taking it by force."

In response to that generous offer, Janus (at least I know his name now) grabbed a handful of silt, and threw it at golden armor guy's face. Golden armor guy didn't seem to like that too much, and gave Janus another shock to the head (that guy was tough, I mean, being electrocuted under the water would be a one-shot even for some superheroes). While he was spazzing, golden armor guy grabbed a small black pebble looking thing from his utility belt (he had that too), and inserted it into Janus open side wound. A second later, Janus started screaming again, his body looked like his bones were trying to puncture him from the inside out, and his skin was bulging with prickles in every inch of his being. Finally, the first spike emerged from his abdomen. It was a simple spike, pure black, about 4 feet long, nothing really all that special; however, more spikes start to come out of Janus, each more painful looking, and inducing more horrid wails than the last. Before long, Janus was practically covered head to toe in spikes, almost resembling a porcupine. There were no spikes jutting out where any important organs might be, hell, it looked like the spikes were designed to not pierce anything like arteries, veins, and insert other vital parts of the anatomy needed to live. Too bad for Janus, it only seemed like golden armor guy was just getting started; he hovered his hand over Janus, and he started to rise off of the ground, until he was hovering in a standing up position, his breathing barely even audible, most of his body hidden in a swirling aura of his own blood. Golden armor guy touched one of the spikes with his gloves, sending a small (but probably excruciating) surge of lightning through Janus' body, and through the other ends of the spikes.

"Amazing things you can do with genetically enhanced sea urchins," said golden armor guy (ugh..just say your name dude, bad guys love the sound of their own names). "Now, Janus, you were saying...something about Namor's military strategies?"

Janus coughed up a heaping load of blood, but managed to raise his head, and look his torturer dead in his face.

"I will never betray my people!" he said in a thick African accent through gritted teeth. "Unlike murderous swine such as yourself!"

Golden armor guy zapped the spikes a few more times, making Janus grunt with pain.

"I believe you," he said to Janus. "But I also said that I would get that information out of you one way or another."

Golden armor guy grabbed Janus' forehead, and a small surge of voltage resonated through his armor gauntlets. Janus spazzed, gurgled on his own blood, and shouted muffled screams from his mouth for 30 seconds as golden armor guy supercharged his head. I noticed that his visor flashed with what seemed to be data, pictures of Janus memories, and so on as the ordeal continued. Finally, golden armor guy let Janus fall back to the ground, and proceeded to mess with his helmet/visor, sorting through all of the information. That took maybe another 30 seconds, but afterwards, it looked like he had gotten all of the information he needed. He pulled out a black sea shell, said some gobbledygook over it, and after a blue aura shimmered across it, a screen if light appeared, and a monstrous figure answered from the other end. He looked just like Beast. That was my first thought when his face appeared on screen; this mother f*(#&amp;$ looks just like Beast from the X-Men. He was big, bulky, blue skinned, wearing golden armor, some type of golden crown/war helmet that looked like a big jagged U, and had a wicked looking sword by his side, and a badass golden trident in hand. What really threw me off, was the insane amount of blue energy that was surrounding this guy. He didn't exactly look like the hero type, so if he had what I think he did, Fury was gonna burn a hole through his eye patch.

"Krang!" the guy shouted in a thick, brutish voice. "Report! Were you successful with apprehending and interrogating Janus?"

"Indeed, Attuma." Krang calmly responded (at least I knew what to call him now). "Namor is currently trying to weaken the bulk of your vanguard forces with a full out frontal assault. At the same time, he has dispatched his mightiest champions to bottleneck your secondary assault force of colossal octopi, sharks, sea demons, and Leviathans. However, he has retreated to his throne in order to amplify his control over sea creatures; which explains the reason for the sudden surge in the Great White sharks, swordfish, and sea serpents fighting for his side."

"The fool!" Attuma gloated. "With him out of the way, my victory is assured, especially with him using the stone!"

"Yes, clever of you to employ Llyra to your cause; how ironic that the source of Namor's downfall will be from the seat of his own throne, his death a result of being impaled by his own trident!"

"Indeed, but in the meantime, my forces are being taxed, Namor's lackeys will not give up the fight easily, what should I do to thwart him?

Krang thought for a moment.

"Keep the vanguard pressing forward, but hold off on the reinforcements; Namor would expect that. Save the Antarctic Leviathans, Cretan Sea Serpents, Roman Sea Dragons, the bulk of your sea demons, piranahaoids, and eel men, for a second wave. In the meantime, deploy a small fragment of your reserve forces to the fray. Focus their efforts on bottlenecking Namor's outer flanks, and constricting his maneuvering abilities; use no more than 5 of the Sea Dragons if you have to."

"Will this give me the victory, Krang?"

"No, my lord, but it will cripple Namor's forces severely, perhaps even enough to lure the false king out into battle. Should that happen, not only will you publicly shame Namor in defeat, but you will weaken his grip on the sea life, thus giving you an opening to exploit. Once Namor is defeated, Llyra can take his throne, assert her absolute control over the sea demons, and send in the the remaining waves of your army; trust me sire, by this time tomorrow, we will be celebrating the dawn of your reign."

Attuma contemplated on this for a bit (I get the feeling that he wasn't exactly a tactical genius).

"It shall be done," he finally said. "Anything else, Krang?"

"Now that you mention it," Krang said, looking at Janus with a sly expression. "I would advise you to spare four Antarctic Leviathans, two platoons of piranhaoids, and eel men, and four Cretan Sea Serpents from your cavalry force."

"And why should I do that, Krang? Do not presume yourself a king, that role belongs to me!"

"Of course not, Lord Attuma. However, while I was interrogating Janus, I came across a rather odd thought; something that may involve reinforcements that even I would not expect him to call upon."

"Are you certain of this?"

"Not entirely, but I find it a bit too suspicious that a warrior spirit such as Janus would venture so far from the battle, especially in a direction that seems to be more surface dweller friendly."

Attuma thought on that notion for a few seconds, and I noticed how him and Krang seemed to have a relationship that was both at arms length, and on a tight leash. They reminded me of the way certain gang bosses (yeah, I knew a few) treated their crew members; that same grudging respect, mixed with a trigger hand ready to shoot if they felt threatened, or wanted to take the top spot. Obviously Krang and Attuma were on the same side, but I doubt they actually trusted one another even a little bit.

"Very well, Krang." Attuma finally grumbled. "I shall relay the orders to Llyra, you be sure to take the royal palace; Llyra will need to sit on the throne if she is to command the full forces of the Nethertrench."

"As you command, Lord Attuma," Krang said, before switching off the communication line, and turning his attention back to Janus.

"You will loose," Janus managed to get out, his voice barely reaching above a gravelly whisper.

"Oh?" Krang asked him. "And why is that? My plan is coming into fruition as we speak, your defenses are compromised beyond repair, and once that idiot Attuma is on the throne, i'll slit his throat, and become the king of the oceans; where exactly is my disadvantage?

"Your disadvantage, just like the dozen times before, comes in the form of you not being able to see past your own ego. You think me defeated? You think your victory assured? Don't be so arrogant, Krang; the great sea god has spoken to me, and he will deliver the savior of Atlantis."

"And you, Janus? What did your 'god' say about your fate?"

"That I will live on in his glory, as a guardian spirit of his royal court."

"Then happy tidings, prince of Atlantis."

Krang pointed a fist at Janus, and a small golden arrow shot out of his wrist, and impaled Janus in the head, killing him instantly. I figured that this would be the end of my dream, but things were just getting started.

I was pulled forward another hundred miles, swimming at the speed of sound. As I soared along the ocean coast, I noticed how the ground became littered with sunken ships, yachts, submarines, and even battleships. I also noticed how the area was just a f*(#!^&amp; warzone. Sharks of all kind were tearing away at what I assumed to be giant blue fluorescent sea serpents, big enough to wrap around ten flagpoles. Eels as long as school buses, were attacking giant stingrays, big enough to wrap around SUV's, and honest to God Atlanteans. I wasn't able to get a good look at them, but I noticed how some of them had Janus' exact same appearance, while others were a darker shade of blue, with more fish-like appearances (gills near their ribs, scaly skin, talons, fins, webbed hands, you get it). Hell, there were more of those piranhaoids in the fray too, biting, scratching, and fighting the Atlanteans tooth n' nail. Don't ask me who was willing the fight; amidst all the chaos and blood, I really couldn't tell you. Besides, it didn't seem like my dream wanted me to linger on this battle anyway. I was drifted further and further through the water, and was getting really worried when all I could see was blackness. Seriously, my eyes were already adjusted to the current setting, so it didn't make sense for my vision to be all not working and stuff; that was until I got to the edge. Again, not afraid of the water, and damn sure not afraid of heights, but from where I was standing, I was starting to get a little anxious about both. It wasn't a trench, i'd be able to at least see the rocks if it was. Hell, even the most appropriate word, chasm, didn't cover the scope of how dark this thing was. In every direction looking forward, it was just nothing but liquid darkness, no other landmasses, no signs of anything beyond the darkness; if I didn't know better i'd swear I was at the edge of the earth. Again, I maybe had half a second to think '_no, no, no, no!' _like Cleveland, before I was rocketed down into the depths of what I pictured to be the underwater version of Hell.

I was panicking. I was scared. I was absolutely 100% out of my element. The only piece of solace that I had, was the fact that this was a dream; and even then I had to keep reassuring myself of my safety.

"_It's ok, Jason," _I kept telling myself as I descended hundreds of miles into the chasm. "_It's only a dream. You'll wake up eventually. Freddy Krueger dosen't exist, you'll be ok, nothing can hurt you right now, just be chill."_

I kept up that mantra for a good five minutes, almost had myself convinced that I was completely safe; then, out of the complete darkness, almost as soon as I shot the bottom of the chasm, a giant growling dog head, big enough to to a chubby bunny contest with SUV's, tried to swallow me whole (that's what my first thought was). That was such a jump scare for me, it's a good thing I didn't have my powers; I would've blasted the thing with so much lightning, Storm, Thor, and Zeus would be ashamed of themselves. Anyway, my fear seemed to be misplaced, because the dog wasn't attacking, it was crashing into the ground. I drifted towards it slowly, not wanting to startle it (like I could have), and I have to say, after getting a closer look, I so wanted one of these things. Like I said, it was massive, and my vision was just starting to adjust to the chasm's depths, so I could appreciate the size of the beast even more. I estimated it would be around 30ft tall/wide if it was standing, with a maw big enough to swallow a small house whole. It's body wasn't covered in fur, but black scales. The thing had a mouth full of shark teeth, glowing neon green eyes (that were starting to dim), and as it breathed, I noticed how it's mouth glowed with a subtle green flame (which was basically a giant roaring oven from where I was standing). I actually felt sad for the poor beast, I wanted to help it; but as a flaming green fireball, about the size of a truck crashed into the ground in the distance, the ground beneath the dog and I started crumble, the beast fell even further into the darkness of the chasm (this thing went down forever). I maybe had a few seconds to feel sorry for the thing, before I was pulled across the floor of the chasm even more. Quick thing to note, the ground in this place was about as stable as a trampoline with holes in it. As I soared along the chasm floor, I noticed how they were basically just plates just barely held together by their connection to each other. The chasm floor spread out like this more miles, I couldn't see the end of it; however, that's not where my dream wanted my center of attention to be. I noticed, almost from out of nowhere, green fire being spewed wildly in every direction. Instinctively, I looked up…really wish I didn't.

Another one of those sea dogs (until I know what they are called, that name's sticking), was a good 50ft above me, and boy was he having a time of it. I saw him spraying green fire everywhere, and I almost thought he was just losing his mind, until I saw little man sized things being burned to a crisp. One of those things actually drifted in my direction, and I identified it as the broiled remains of a paranoid (sucks to be that guy). The sea dog was definitely putting up a hell of a fight, swiping wildly at his attackers (there were hundreds of the little $#!+$), swallowing them in his mouth, and broiling more and more with his green fire. Now that I mention it, the sea dogs were much more badass than I gave the dead one credit for. For starters this one (and I assume every other one of it's kind) has giant bat-like wings about the size of an airplane's (obviously hydrodynamic). Jutting out of its back were four huge octopus-like tentacles, thick enough to crunch a pickup truck, with huge pincers attached to the ends; and believe me, the dog was definitely making use of them. Anyway, just when it seemed like the sea dog was getting a lock on the fight…a dragon barreled into him. I'm not joking you guys, and honest to God, bluish green dragon (whose aurora-like skin actually contrasted beautifully in the bluish black darkness of the deep sea), with a giant fish tail in place of hind legs, tackled the giant underwater dog with bat wings, and octopus tentacles; if any of this actually makes sense to you, i'll get you first class tickets to whatever vacation spot you want to go to. So yeah, the sea dog and water dragon duked it out for a good minute or so, displaying a fierce, actually quite terrifying battle. They scratched, clawed, bit, blasted fire even, but at the end of the day, and even though it cost him half a tentacle, the sea dog did manage to snag the win by biting deep into the the water dragon's neck, thrashing it around for a bit, and then blowing his head into a burst of bloody chunks with a close range blast of fire. With no other enemy in sight, it seemed like the sea dog was finally in the clear, but just like Janus, this thing couldn't seem to catch a break. Out of the hazy dark background, I noticed a huge figure, like 5X bigger the the Titanic huge. Once I got a clearer view of it, I wanted to crawl into a trench and stay there forever. This thing was basically the result of a fusion between a monster whale, and Great White Shark. It's brown scaly skin made it look like a mutated trout had gotten into the mix somehow, and it's eyes…nothing but two black marbles of indifferent savage nature. The sea dog barely had a chance to look back (I swear I heard it whimper), and make a half assed attempt to flee, before the monster whale/shark thing opened it's maw, revealing a pearly set of razor sharp whites (which went perfectly with it's 'able to swallow ten yachts at once' mouth), and with more speed than I thought a beast of that size could have, grabbed it in it's mouth, and chewed it down to hamburger meat; smearing the water with more blood than I ever cared to see in my lifetime. As the beast munched on its midnight snack, I noticed the shimmer of a few more water dragons, as well as the scuttling of hundreds of piranhaoids. They scurried around in their own respective areas, but for the most part, kept to a fairly traceable pattern; almost like a set patrol unit. I would've inquired on this, but I was apparently on a tight schedule, as my dream whisked me even further into the ongoing ocean (seriously, the only reason this didn't completely suck, was the fact that "Under The Sea wasn't playing in the background).

I didn't know exactly how many miles I swam out, but I was kickin' it double time, barely able to see anything other than a few vague glimpses of rocky spires in the bluish black water. After what seemed like forever, I noticed something in the distance, only a mile or so out, and glowing as blue as neon paint. I braced myself for the mother of all monsters, but was pleasantly surprised to see that the source of the blue light was actually from what seemed to be a city (yeah, Atlantis, but what else could it be, L.A.?). I rocketed into it, or should I say over it, and I gotta say, this place was legit. I always pictured Atlantis to be a small, broken, old, rundown piece of Greek/Roman-like buildings and statues. I pictured it's inhabitants living in broken temples, and living all primitive (with spears and stuff). Looking at this place from above, my imagination owed this place an apology. The kingdom was definitely no stranger to Greek/Roman architecture, but it definitely had a modern type of vibe to it as well; small temples, and villas were accompanied by sweet looking underwater mansions (the kinds you could only get if your last name was Trump, Gates, Depp, or Bloom), there seemed to be a sort of tubular transportation network snaking it's way along and under (lots of what I could see of the kingdom were on top of barely connected plates either held up by technology, magic, or both) the ground. In every direction, there was at least some sort of statue dedicated to guys holding tridents. The place was definitely beautiful, lights hung in tall posts, illuminating the city in a nice vibrant shade of sky blue, the coral gardens (which were f*(#!%&amp; everywhere) were sparkling rainbow colleges of marine plant life, and I could literally see door sized seahorses, multi colored fish, and sharks with saddles, toting heavily armored Atlanteans, swimming about. Oh, and notice how I keep using the word kingdom, instead of things like city or village? Well, that's because this place was massive; like, bigger than I could see, massive. I once read that Atlantis was about the size of Australia, and I definitely would not be surprised if that was the case for this Lost Empire (slow clap for me). To bad the city life was depressing as hell. Nobody was out in the roads, unless they were carrying weapons, wounded, or dead; and this was happening in every direction, millions upon millions were either preparing for battle, getting first aid, or taking a dirt nap. I won't go into detail about it (my dream had no time for it anyway), but yeah, this was definitely not a Disney playland. Anyway, I was whisked forward, the entire kingdom of Atlantis flying by in a blue blur, and once I stopped, I was basically in the middle of another war zone. Don't get me wrong, i've been in a small scale battle before (the zombie thing, you remember?), but as I hovered about a mile over the current skirmish, I kinda felt like a little kid when they first realize that the world is a lot bigger than them.

Now get this. Atlantis was really big, Australia big. I never contemplated on the thought, but it takes a pretty big force to assault a continent, especially Lord of the Rings style. Looking at the assaulting force of Attuma's army, basically embodied the exact amount of intensity a person should have when assaulting a kingdom of Atlantis' size. The army consisted of pretty much everything I heard Krang talk about, piranhaoids, water dragons, Leviathans (I guess that's what that jumbo whale/shark thing was), as well as some rogue Atlanteans dressed in golden armor. The army was massive, I mean I was looking in the distance, and I still couldn't see the end of it; and by my estimation we were already at about 500 million (not an exaggeration) and rising. Namor's side, the ones with the black armor, were definitely no slouches either. Looking back we were probably a good 50 miles from Atlantis' border, but it didn't even matter, cuz almost every spare inch of land and water between here and there was occupied with soldiers, sea monsters, and warring sea animals. The water was filled with the clanging of weapons, firing of lasers (there were actually highly intense rapid fire green energy blasts coming from some point inside Atlantis taking out, or at least distracting some of the big sea monsters), the sounds of death cries, flesh being ripped apart, and the water was definitely red enough for the occasion; seriously, after three Great White Sharks took apart a sea serpent, the water was basically a paint ball cesspit. Again, I could definitely kill if the situation called for it, but watching all of this…..this…slaughter, I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to just skim over all of this, practically begging my dream to take me somewhere else; naturally, my dream would give me a hardy f*(# you, and keep me surveying the battle for not one, not two, but FOUR F*(#!&amp;$ HOURS!

In retrospect, even if I didn't like watching the battle, I guess I could see the purpose. For one, I had to see Krang's plan come into fruition, and boy was it working. It was definitely slow work, like I said, Atlantis was definitely no pushover, but the way Krang was maneuvering his forces...well, it was a smarter approach. While the Atlanteans were focusing on being an unmovable wall, Krang was manipulating his army to climb over that wall. Instead of pressing his army forward, they seemed to be holding their ground, only pressing forward as much as they needed too. Occasionally they released a volley of hundreds of black tridents over their enemies, to give off the illusion that they were hell bent on going through their opposing army. At the same time, Krang was bulking up the outer flanks of his army, and having them really put on the heat; actually pushing the Atlanteans back, and almost making a crescent over their entire force. Mind you, this happened over a course of four hours, and spanned the perimeter of a continent, but from a strategic standpoint, Krang was kinda of a pro. After a few more minutes of fighting, a huge blue flare from way deep in the attacking army's bulk, erupted, and took off like a comet, charging straight towards me. Ok, now was the moment I wake up, right? Something big, had obviously spotted me, it was time to dip out before I was killed Nightmare on Elm Street style, right? RIGHT?! Well, my dream gave me another f*(# you, and didn't let me wake up. was so totally dead, so unbelievably murdered, as the blue comet flew right through me, not even noticing/harming me (phew!), and crashed in the heart of Atlantis' army. Upon impact, the comet exploded, creating a crater where at least 3,000 Atlanteans used to be. Once the dust cleared, I got a good view of what that 'comet' was, and damn was it something! Even while the dust was still clouding my vision, I could hear the SHUNK!, SLICH!, and THOCK! sounds, as whatever it was, went on a killing spree. Occasionally i'd see another blast of blue light, and for some reason, felt the water around me change into some pretty violent currents. Finally, the dust cleared, and I got a good look at whatever was so badass (other than me), it could tear though armies.

It was obviously Attuma. Guy had the blue skin, golden armor, stupid helmet, and everything. Looking up close though, I was slightly more afraid of him (only slightly!). For starters, the dude could fight, and not just fight, fight, I mean he could REALLY fight. As he slashed, stabbed, and thrusted his trident through any poor Atlantean in his reach, he displayed a rage controlled fighting style (I used that on Crosby too many times to count). Perfectly balanced strength, speed, skill, with a little bit of unpredictable rage to spice it up. He quickly thrusted his trident through another Atlantean, planted him and the spear into the ground, and did a 360 degree spin kick, creating an energy charged whirl wave, and blew apart everything around him that was in a 20ft radius. Afterwards, he took his trident out of the mangled flesh of the Atlantean he impaled (poor bastard), and after charging it with a $#!+ ton of blue energy, swept it across the water like a baseball bat, and released one hell of a crescent wave, completely obliterating a good 300 (or more) Atlanteans in about three seconds. Attuma continued his slaughter for another 3 seconds, killing over 100 Atlanteans, and three great white sharks. Finally, after he seemed kinda bored with what he was doing, he twirled his trident, and the water spun around him at super high speeds, rising higher and higher (taking a few Atlanteans for a ride) until it reached a good 20 feet. The whirl wave took the form of Attuma, he basically created a water Combat Avatar, and resumed to hack down Atlanteans like wheat in a field.

"NAMOR!" Attuma shouted, his voice reverberating across the ocean depths. "THE TIME OF YOUR FALSE REIGN IS OVER, HALF-BREED! COME, COME AND FACE LORD ATTUMA, THE TRUE KING OF ATLANTIS!"

He slammed his foot on the ground; 400 Atlanteans were snuffed out like candles.

"NAAAAAMOOOR!" Attuma roared.

Another blue comet, this one actually brighter, flew out from behind Atlantis' borders, and I could feel the power vibrating from it; like the sea had collapsed in on itself, and was coming at me in one focused shot. Attuma growled at it, and his Combat Avatar dispersed, and reformed into about 100 jagged pieces of energy charged water; yes, pieces, Attuma was somehow making the water solid without freezing it. Attuma roared, and the jagged water spikes flew at the comet quicker than bullets (I would know). Dunno why I was surprised by it, but the spikes liquefied after getting within 5ft of the comet, and in response, the comet glowed brighter, and doubled its speed, dead set on steamrolling Attuma. Attuma quickly created a water shield, but he may as well have held up a wall of paper for all the good it did him. The comet barreled into Attuma, completely shattering the shield, and he was rocketed upwards so fast, I thought he might be in danger of getting shot out of the water. The glow of the comet dimmed a bit, and I got a glimpse of the guy inside of this one. He was dressed in black leather pants, which were also covered with armor plates that was patterned after fish fins. His chest plate was the same type of black metal as the other Atlanteans' armor, but his was lined with golden highlights. He wore shiny gold arm gauntlets, had honest to God wings sprouting out of his ankles (so, he was an Atlantean son of Hermes?), and had slicked back hair, slanted eyes, tan skin, pointed ears, and kinda looked like a Greek elf. I'll never say that to his face though, cuz my God, this guy was a beefcake...like Dwayne Johnson level beefcake. Anyway, He soared after Attuma, manipulating the water around him to take the form of an energy charged Great White Shark (so badass), while roaring something in Atlantean (probably F*(# YOU!). Attuma was still out of it, so he had absolutely no chance to defend against the shark construct opened it's jaws (Namor, yeah I know who Namor was, kinda slipped out of the construct, while still keeping it intact), and clamped down on him, going critical as it exploded like a gas tank. I figured Attuma had to be dead, problem solved for Atlantis, but something weird happened with the explosion. Instead of the explosion spreading outwards, the blast kinda folded in on itself, like something was vacuuming it up. After the bubbles cleared, Attuma was fine. His blue aura was actually glowing brighter, the etchings on his golden armor were almost humming with power, and he had a '_i'm about to enjoy myself' _look plastered all over his face. Either for another test, or because he just didn't get it, Namor blasted at Attuma with a ray of blue energy. Attuma simply twirled his trident with one hand, and as the blast made contact with it, absorbed the energy like a sponge; I noticed how the energy was absorbed though the trident, and seemed to be going directly to the armor, rather than inside Attuma. After that, Attuma charged Namor, who charged him back with even more speed.

I'll say this, those guys fought like...well, gods. Every punch, slash, block, and kick sent ripples in the ocean floor; hell, Namor actually seemed like was trying to keep Attuma in high waters, so that his army was less affected by the battle. Namor's strategy seemed to revolve around trying to gut Attuma with his trident, performing some extremely good spearmanship, but when he was able to keep his distance, Namor launched constant volleys of small, but wicked sharp, spear points made of hardened water. I get that he was going for precision over power, trying to get Attuma between the weak points of his armor, but Attuma was just as good at fighting, and manipulating the water; so yeah, Namor would have to try harder.

My dream kept me in the midst of the fighting for a few more minutes, which was basically a big stab, blast, and waterbending fest (I found it disturbing how Attuma seemed to be getting more powerful just by being near the stone), before I was basically yanked backwards into Atlantis. At this point, I was just sick of this. I mean, I got the point; big fight in Atlantis, bad guys winning, stone of Poseidon involved, I needed to warn Fury. I just didn't see any point in my dream continuing any further; that was until I realized where I was going. Like I said, I basically skimmed over Atlantis when I was being propelled through the water, so I may have missed a few things; boy was this a big something! I was propelled back to the edge of Atlantis, which confused me at first, until I noticed something strange in the distance, something that looked like a floating mountain just outside of the main city, and about half a mile over it. I shot upwards like a bullet, and once able to get a clear view of it, stopped just at the gates of the palace complex. The palace was a giant dome, about the size of four cruise ships lined up, with lots of spires, balconies, and aqueducts decorating the landscape. Blue lights decorated the courtyard, which made the coral gardens in this place amazing sight to see. Hundreds of Atlanteans, and various marine life, were swimming about (probably on guard duty), but that's not where my dream wanted me to be. I phased between the palace doors, and floated along a bunch of corridors and hallways (this place must have been built inside the infrastructure of the mountain, cuz we went down way too many staircases for it to be kept solely within the dome), passing by hundreds of guards, until I made it to the throne room; oh, just in case you wanna know what the interior looked like, just insert lots of golden walls, stupid looking paintings, a ballroom, a feast hall, and a bunch of other royal stuff I couldn't care less about. However, once I got to the throne room, things got a lot more interesting, a fun way. For starters, only six people were alive in a swirl of blood and dismembered bodies. One of them I recognized as Krang, three of the others were piranhaoids (who were savagely eating up as many bodies as they could get their claws on), but there were two other faces I didn't recognize. One of them was male, had blue skin, wore a red cape, and unfortunately for me, armored red underwear; only armored red underwear. He had a brown mustache and beard (like, bad guy cliche style mustache and beard), was wielding a golden trident (those things must've been a dime a dozen),and was wearing a red battle helmet; just like Krang, he was glowing with blue energy. The other new player was a girl, who was sitting on an elaborate stone throne shaped like a seashell. She had blue skin, red hair, and was wearing a long red cape, and traditional Greek armor (of course it was red, and had fish scale patterns on it). She was also holding a golden trident, but this time, it seemed like she was actually using it for a purpose that didn't involve stabbing people. She was swirling with blue and green energy, weird glyphs, Egyptian and Greek, were shimmering around her. I dunno how I felt it, but I could feel her brain wave pattern, like a stereo going at full blast. Whatever it was she was doing, it was obviously hell on her; her breathing was almost nonexistent, her face was contorted in stress, and whatever she was chanting, I could tell it was dangerous, like, defusing a nuke dangerous. Krang and the other guy simply stood guard over her.

"Ughhh!" the guy in the red armor muttered. "Tiger Shark and Orka get to be in the glorious heat of battle, while I remain trapped on the fringe with you and the she witch!"

"Shut up, Byrrah," Krang said, calmly cleaning off one of his knives. "My scanners indicate three platoons of the royal guard making their way to the throne room as we speak; you will have more than your fill of blood. And even then, you will not leave your post; Llyra's control over the great sea monsters of the Nethertrench, is vital to the defeat of Namor. If I have to chain you to this floor, I will do it."

"Easy, dear cousin," Byrrah chuckled. "I know my duty, I simply grow bored with it. Besides, since when have you had such devotion to Attuma?"

"I don't, but if that bumbling idiot takes the throne, it'll get me closer to it as well. If it means becoming king in the long run, I will play second to Attuma. For now that is."

"Always thinking three steps ahead, eh Krang?"

Krang shrugged, just as the doors of the throne room blew apart. Hundreds of Atlanteans in black and gold armor flooded through the gym sized throne room, each of them loaded with swords, spears, blasters, etc. The two piranhaoids didn't stand a chance, and were immediately killed off, but Krang extended his palm, and a huge blast of Poseidon energy (it was obviously from the stone) wasted twenty Atlanteans at once.

"GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, BYRRAH?!" Krang roared to his partner.

"IT'LL DO!" Byrrah roared back, throwing his trident though 5 of the guards, and charging deep in the fray

I watched them go at for about ten seconds, grudgingly admiring Krang's discipline, and Byrrah's raw power (remind you of any other people), as they continued to waste the palace's forces. After that, I was gone. Literally, I wasn't yanked anywhere else, and unfortunately, I didn't wake up; I simply flashed from one place to another.

Ok, i've been through the roughest neighborhoods in New York, i've rode on the same subway as the Royals (big gang, not the people to f*(# with), and didn't bat an eyelash. In the place I was at right now? Well, let's just say...no, I can't even play this off. This place made me wanna $#!+ myself.

It was more than just darkness, that was easy. It was literally a trench filled with living, liquidy, despair. The shadows seemed alive, aggressive, filled with nothing but the desire to destroy and consume. I heard wailing, shrieks, and roars; each one so horrible i'm pretty sure it was sending shiver down my body's spine in real time. Every so often, a monstrous face or limb would form in the darkness, each more horrible than the last. I looked in every direction, and nearly panicked when I couldn't find my way out of the darkness. Hell, the voices I heard in this place were basically feeding me paranoia. I wanted to wake up, I wanted to wake up so bad, but the darkness still had something beautiful (sarcasm) to show me. The inky substance started to bubble violently, and after looking like my 6th grade science project (don't ask), the darkness finally exploded. Right in front of me, a colossal, monstrous silhouette emerged. It looked like a Minotaur; dead serious. I couldn't see it's finer features, but I did see it towering high enough to use the empire state building as a baseball bat, I saw it's burning red eyes, impossibly large horns and claws (that looked sharp enough to impale airplanes), and four huge tentacles, easily strong enough to crumple a bridge. The beast stumbled around for a few seconds, looking like someone who just waking up from and unpleasant dream (lucky), before roaring a guttural, cow-like roar, louder than Times Square during New Year's. The beast flung itself upwards, making me feel like Spongebob and Patrick when their patty wagon was swallowed by that huge eel with road patterns in it (you know what i'm talking about, don't act like you don't); after he went wherever, the party really got started. Out of the murky shadows, hundreds upon hundreds of figures, each seven feet tall savage looking, rocketed after the sea Minotaur. Occasionally, i'd see a few mini-sea Minotaurs, about 8 feet tall, something that looked like a sea version of a Balrog, just as big as the big sea Minotaur, and the list went on and on; an entire armada of monsters from ocean Hell swimming from God knows where, to rip Atlantis a new one. I finally, realized why I was having this dream, whoever sent me here, they were sending out distress beacon, they needed my help! Just like that, I opened my eyes, and was almost blinded by the view.

Sunlight was flooding into the room (a welcome sight), illuminating the little things like Allyson's TV, work desk, and chandelier; but after the things I had seen, I may as well have been in Heaven. I almost forgot about what had happened before (before I went to sleep), but then I remembered who my arms were around, and it wall came flooding back to me. She was still sleeping, her light snore actually kinda pleasing to my ears. Not to be all like Twilight (f*(# that movie), but I kinda liked watching her sleep; her face had this kind of natural angelic serenity to it, and she had this cute way of breathing in through her nose, and out of her barely open mouth. I could've stayed like this forever, but Allyson's alarm clock had other plans. The blaring alarm almost gave me a heart attack, and it took everything I had not to blast it to bits. Allyson on the other hand just kinda stirred lightly, reached over, and turned the alarm off. She turned back to me, snuggling up slightly, but then, after looking at me, she plastered a blank, but serious, expression on her face. She studied me for a bit, the worry very much clear in her demeanor (I was seriously starting to think she had mind reading powers).

"Uhh.." I started (I STILL suck at this!). Hi?"

Allyson tilted her head, smirking slightly.

"Really?" she retorted. "Hi?"

I didn't know how to respond (did I mention I still suck at this?), but thankfully, as Allyson wrapped my mouth in a deep, slow, long, sweet, kiss, I didn't have to.

She pulled back slow, playfully biting my lip, and laughing at my dumbfounded face.

"Sorry," she said. "I promise that was the last one, i'm totally all business-like now. It's just...you seemed worried; you needed that, and I wanted it."

I smirked at her, and sat straight up, groaning slightly. Oh yeah, I remembered last night.

"Mm-hmm," Allyson continued, sitting up with me. "I know what that feels like; look what you did to me."

I turned around, and put my hand over my mouth, just barely stifling my gasp. Allyson's skin was basically a giant bruise. All of her stomach was purple, her thighs looked like a child went nuts on them' with a paintbrush. Her arms actually had hand shaped bruises around them; I had done that!

"Oh my God!" I said from underneath my hands. "Allyson, I-"

"It's fine, Jason," Allyson interrupted me. "I can't exactly say i've looked worse, but I do heal fast. Besides, I did some pretty rough things to you too; I can still see some purple areas on your chest."

I looked at myself, and chuckled; it was only the first date and look what happened!

"But seriously," she continued. "What's up, you look like you've seen a ghost, and don't you dare lie to me, Jason."

She scrambled over to my side, looking me in the eyes for emphasis. Like I said, through either will or cuteness, if it wasn't a physical confrontation, i'd never win anything with this girl.

"It's nothing," I halfheartedly lied. "Ok, not nothing, but...a dream, that's all, it was just a dream."

"Just a dream?" Allyson asked me. "Last time you 'dreamed' you saw evil gods, and predicted how our day in the city would end with us fighting snake fashionista rejects; I think I wanna hear more about this dream, please."

"Why? It's no big deal, besides, it's not like we can actually do anything about it."

Allyson turned her head, and sighed.

"Jason," she started, her speech clear and curt. "I am trying to be patient with you, I really am. And i'm saying this not as your sorta, kinda girlfriend, but as a member of the team that you lead. You need to communicate with me and Grant more. Think about yesterday, about how disastrous that could've went if we were caught off guard, think about the people who are most likely suffering in your dream, because you are too afraid to act. We. I can't help you, if you don't tell me what's wrong. So if you want this team, and this relationship to go anywhere, please, tell me what you saw."

My initial thought (and i'm so glad I didn't say it) was "_screw you, I don't have to tell you $#!+, get the f*(# off my back!" _However, I gave it a good second, thought about it for a good hundred times, and grudgingly came to an agreement that I did owe Grant and Allyson some foresight to what we as a team might be up against.

"Ok," I finally breathed out. "You wanna know? Fine."

I quickly explained the contents of my dream to her, what happened to Janus, the battle taking place outside Atlantis, what it took to get there, the monsters involved, everything. Afterwards, Allyson kinda stared at me, her face all like: "_da f*(#!?"._

"Wow!" she said, her face spontaneously bursting with a smile. "It's a start. Maybe we'll eventually get to the deep stuff."

"Very funny," I responded. "Maybe if you can-"

I stopped myself, not wanting to let my anger to bleed into my speech.

"It's ok, Jason," Allyson said soothingly. "Look, I know it may seem difficult-"

"Difficult!" I interrupted her. "When's the last time you dove a billion feet under water? How long can you hold your breath in the ocean?"

"I don't need to breathe in my Sun Form."

Now it was my turn to give her a "_da f*(#!?" _look.

"What!" Allyson said. "It's a part of my power! Look, Jason, I get it. You're scared, and you care about the people getting hurt. Plus there's the stone to think about; can't let the bad guys get it.

"But again," I said. "How are we supposed to get it, when we have to go scuba diving for it; not too mention fight off an entire army."

"In case your memory is fuzzy, we literally did the latter, like two days ago. And this is S.H.I.E.L.D., the biggest center for all things weird and freaky. If anybody's gonna get us to Atlantis of all places, S.H.I.E.L.D. can do it. First, we have to tell Colonel Fury what's going on; we can't get help if we don't ask for it."

"Aw man. Once Fury hears that another stone is basically on the verge of being taken, he's gonna burst a blood vessel."

"Maybe. But he'll go ballistic if you don't at least let him know what's going on. Which one would you prefer?"

"I'd prefer option C; spend all day with you and Grant."

"Oh? Is my company not enough for you, Jason?"

"Trust me," I said while standing up. "You're more than enough, maybe too much."

"Then why do you love it so much?" Allyson asked me.

I grabbed her hands, pulled her to her feet (she was wincing a bit), and gave her a firm kiss. We both let it happen for a good twenty seconds, and then slowly broke it off.

"Double standard!" Allyson nearly shrieked. "I thought we agreed to put us on hold!"

"Well," I playfully started. "You got a freebie, I get one too."

Allyson thought with that for a few seconds.

"Ok," she finally said with a shrug. "I'll let you have that one, but no more; you set the rule, you have to follow it."

"Fine," I chuckled, hugging her one last time.

She winced as our bodies squished together, and kinda pushed me off her.

"You should probably heal that already," I told her.

"Don't worry" she said. "I will, but i'll do it in the shower."

"Why?"

"Because, I love shower singing. And when I shower in unison with solar energy covering my body, ooooh!"

"Sounds fun, maybe I should join you sometime."

"You better."

She walked into her bathroom, and I quickly got dressed, putting on my pants, shirt, and shoes. I grabbed my jacket and tie, left the room, and made a beeline to my own, not even bothering to look at the stares some of the agents were giving me. After I was safe behind closed doors, I quickly undressed, took a quick 10 minute shower, and went to my closet to get dressed. I grabbed a pair of blue jeans, an orange T-Shirt, and my blue Wild Force leather jacket (what? I really wanted to wear it. Afterwards, I put my morpher on, and decided to contact Grant; had to let him know about the Atlantis situation.

"Yo, Grant," I said. "We got a situation, come in."

I waited for a minute.

"Grant?" I tried again.

I waited for another minute.

"Grant, dude, where the hell are you?! Pick up!"

Yet another minute; still no answer. Now I was starting to get worried.

"Allyson?" I messaged her. "You there?

"Yeah," she answered. "What's up?"

"Have you tried contacting Grant yet?"

"No, why?"

"He's not answering his morpher, and i've tried calling him three times already."

"Maybe he's in the shower? Already at breakfast? Decided to hit the gym early?"

"He'd still answer me though; i'm starting to worry."

"Here, let me give it a go."

Our communication line went silent for a few minutes.

"Ok," Allyson said once messaging me back, her voice etched with anxiety. "He hasn't messaged me back yet…but it could be for any number of reasons, no need to panic."

"No need to panic!" I almost screamed back at her.

"Yes! He might still be sleeping is all. Just meet me at my room, we'll go up to his room, and see if he's there."

"Ok," I said, trying to get my breathing under control. "Alright, i'm on my way now."

I quickly exited my room, jogged over to Allyson's, and knocked on her door. She quickly opened the door, and whoa, cute getup. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, was wearing a long white shirt with black stripes, and tight blue jeans tucked into her brown boots; good thing I could react faster than she could see, cuz I damn near had to remember that mouths are suppose to be closed when you're not talking.

"Nice jacket," she said as she stepped out of her room. "Ready to go?"

"Uh, yeah" I said. "Thanks, you good, I mean, you look good too."

She smiled, rolled her eyes, and started walking to the elevator, leaving me to follow behind her. We quickly made our way to Grant's room, and Allyson knocked on it a few times.

"Grant?" she called. "You in there?"

No answer for like 30 seconds.

I tired again, actually banging on his door.

"Grant!" I called. "Bro, you there?!"

Still no answer.

"Alright," I said. "Time to let myself in."

I made my head vibrate really fast (that'll do wonders for your brain), and stuck it through Grant's door. I looked around for a few seconds, and aside from his unmade bed (I never made mine's either), nothing else was here. The TV was off, I couldn't hear anything coming from the bathroom, and nothing indicated that Grant was here.

"Nothing there," I told Allyson, as I pulled my head back.

"You know that was rude, right?" Allyson scolded me. "What if Grant was-"

"There's only a few things you can privately do in bed by yourself, and I do not need that image in my head, Allyson."

She gave me a '_why would you say that?" _face, and we both headed over to the cafeteria. Just before we went inside, Allyson stopped me.

"Wait a minute!" she said. "I just thought about something!"

"What is it?" I asked her. "You think you might know where Grant is?"

"He has to be working out, Jason, there's nowhere else he could be. Still, that's not the point. I just realized that we have no idea where Fury is right now; how are we supposed to figure out a plan to get to Atlantis if we can't clear it through him first?"

Damn. Didn't think that part through.

"Well," I started. "I mean, I guess we could…."

It hit me like a bolt of lightning (pun intended). The Helicarrier obviously operated on electricity, and if I could sense the entire infrastructure of a skyscraper, what was to say that I couldn't do it here?

"Hold up," I told Allyson. "Lemme try something."

I closed my eyes and concentrated. Last time I did this, I used the fuse box, but I didn't have that luxury right now. Instead, I took a few deep breaths, and let myself feel the electricity surging through the ship. It took a good ten seconds to achieve, but I was eventually able to sense the voltage around everything inside the ship, and used that to map out Fury's location. It only took a few seconds to lock onto him (he was examining the stones in the Helicarrier vault with Mrs. Kennedy), so I tried to find Grant, before logging out of the Helicarrier's power grid. Believe me, I searched up and down, left and right, forwards and backwards. I could sense every last person on this ship, what they were doing, and where they were; Grant was nowhere to be found on the entire thing.

"Well, here's some good news," I said to Allyson, as I detached myself from the grid. "Fury's in some kinda vault with Ms. Kennedy; probably trying to study how the stones work. The bad news, and this is not an exaggeration at all, Grant is literally not on this ship."

I tried to break it easy to her, but come on, how 'easy' is it to tell someone "_hey, our friend is missing, and he might be injured, kidnapped, or maybe dead!" _Yeah, Allyson's face morphed into a display of angry, scared, confusion; she was having none of it.

"What you mean he's not on the ship!?" she basically shrieked/hissed at me. "He has to be here, where else could he be!?"

"I dunno, Allyson!" I said, biting down the worry I felt myself. "But I combed every inch of this ship, and I swear to you, he's simply not on it!"

"But, but, where would he be? He can't have just left on his own, and there's no way he could've been taken; where in God's name could he be?"

She started breathing really fast, her eyes went out of focus, and she put her hands to her temples, as if having a migraine. I couldn't blame her; I was actually feeling the same way, just keeping it bottled up.

"Look, Allyson," I started, trying to calm her down. "Let's just-"

"Don't you tell me to calm down, Jason!" she stopped me. "That never, EVER, works!"

"Ok, I won't say it. But all we can go to Fury; hell, that's the only thing we can do."

"But what about Grant?"

"Why do you think we're going to Fury?"

"To tell him about your dream of Atlantis."

"Well, let's add Grant to that list. Follow me-"

An alarm, the same one that alerted us to the stone of Hades being in Kansas (such fond memories), blared to life; cutting off my sentence, and attacking my eardrums. Before I could make sense of anything, Allyson and I were quickly transported away (starting to hate that), probably to another super supreme meeting place where we'd have to save a city from flesh eating mutant gerbils.

(Grant's Perspective)

Ok, two things guys. Number one: Don't sweat it, i'm fine. I wasn't kidnapped, I'm not hurt, I just….well, we'll get to that in a sec. Number two: we're rewinding back to last night, just after I left the two lovebirds a present on the door frame; seriously, did I have to do everything for those two? So yeah, now that we're on the same page, let's kick it!

So yeah, I was the one who made the mistletoe grow on Allyson's door frame. A little cheesy, yes, but they needed to get a move on, even if I had to push them. Rest assured, I didn't see/hear what they were doing once behind closed doors; although I had a pretty good idea! Anyway, my work was done, so I decided to go out on top, with a good sleep. I mean, not that I don't make it look easy, but kicking ass and taking names on a large scale actually takes a lot out of a guy; I was ready to hit the sack. I stripped out of my suit, loved the thing, dived into bed, and wrapped myself in the covers. Usually it took me about 10 minutes to get to sleep, should've taken a lot less with al the physical activity I did, but I was still wide awake by then. I grabbed my remote, flipped on the TV and watched some Adult Swim for half an hour; usually a good episode of Family Guy, Robot Chicken, or Aqua Teen Hunger Force will put me right to sleep. Yeah, that still didn't work. I flipped off the TV, and rolled around, trying furiously to fall asleep, actually getting kinda frustrated with myself. Still, after an hour of tossing, turning, and staring at my ceiling, I still wasn't tired. Seriously, I actually felt like I could stay up forever! I put my hands behind my head, and sighed.

"_Ok, Grant," _I thought to myself. "_No biggie, just a side effect of your powers, that's all it is. So I loose a bit of sleep, big deal. I may not even need to for a while, maybe it's one of those extended energy things. Just relax, be chill, and wait it out."_

Yeah, that's the stuff. Nothin' like a good old self pep talk to soothe the nerves. I mean, if this seriously became a problem for me, all i'd have to do is talk to Gaea about it anyway; what could possibly go wrong? Well, give it a whopping 3 minutes, and i'd find out.

It started in small doses at first. One second I was enjoying the solace of my room, the next, I could hear 100 different voices at once; some on the Helicarrier, some from extremely far away. Let me tell you something, that $#!+ hurt! It was like someone jammed a stereo set in my ears, and put it on full blast, I could barely hear myself think. I tried controlling it. I plugged my ears, focused hard on making my ears not hear so good, and curled in a fetal position. None of that helped in the slightest, in fact, the more I tried to turn it off, the more voices I started to hear. I heard some guy talking in Arabic, a fireworks display happening somewhere in the world, the screams of a woman being mugged, Jason and Allyson getting busy; it just wouldn't end! Then, in a moment of clarity, it all stopped in a grinding hault. No more voices upon voices barraging my eardrums, no more hearing things from millions of miles away, just complete silence. I've never been more thankful for that word before in my life. I was just about to phone Gaea, she had some serious explaining to do, but just as soon as they stopped, my powers started to act up again; this time with a double whammy. Now, in addition to my hearing basically opening up by 100, letting in the voices of millions of people and sounds; my sight was also joining in on the fun. All of a sudden, my eyes start to burn with a burning hot pain; like someone put searing glass shards in them. The pain was so bad, I couldn't even keep my eyes closed, and that was where the root of the problem began. It wasn't just the fact that I could see straight through the Helicarrier walls, that was kind of a given. No, it was the fact that I could literally see 500 miles past the ocean, and was looking at the Eiffel Tower, like I was three feet in front of it. Even worse, my vision wasn't ever focused on one place. One second I was staring at some random apartment in Germany, the next I was looking at the molecular structure of the Sydney Opera House. Hell, there were more than a few occasions where I was seeing things that weren't even in my line of sight. I caught clear flashes of my high school football field,Avengers Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, even my parents watching TV in the living room of my house. My eyes were straining more than was humanly possible, like they were being stretched to the limit of my sockets. To add more pain to the mix, my ears opened the floodgates, and let in all the noise. So in addition to getting an all around the world tour from the comfort of my own bed, I could hear the noise/voices of the entire world flooding into my ears at once. Plugging my ears didn't help, though I did my damnedest to try, and no matter how hard I tried to stop myself, my eyes would not stop seeing everything. Hell, I started to levitate off my bed, even though i've never had a problem with flight control ever. My body spontaneously burst in green fire, my gravity powers were out of wack; yeah, I was just having a bad time of everything right now. I honestly felt hopeless at this point. Nothing I did to get myself under control was working, in fact, it was steadily getting worse; I just didn't know what to do anymore.

"_GRANT!" _I heard Gaea's voice roar in my head over the millions of others. "_GRANT, FOCUS! I NEED YOU TO FOCUS ON MY VOICE!"_

That was kind of a big order to ask, what with the millions and millions of sounds in my ears, but I gave it my best shot.

"_I HEAR YOU!" _I responded. "_BUT WHAT'S GOING ON?! WHY ARE MY POWERS F*(#! $ UP?!"_

"_Just listen to me," _Gaea said, her voice getting lower, starting to drown in the sea of the world's voice. "_I shielded you from the full effects during your battle with the Brotherhood, but now your body is starting experiencing the full scale of your powers."_

"_NO $#!+!" _I responded. "_NOW HOW DO I TURN THEM OFF!?"_

"_You cannot turn them off Grant, they are a part of you now. The only thing you can do is learn how to control them; let me help you."_

"_HOW CAN YOU HELP ME, YOU DID THIS TO ME, I CAN'T EVEN HEAR MYSE-"_

I stopped suddenly. Maybe it was because I was to angry to realize it, but I wasn't hearing, or seeing anything that wasn't in my room. The only voice I heard was Gaea's.

"_How did you do that?" _I thought to her.

"_It was nothing I did, Grant," _Gaea responded. "_I simply offered my voice out to you, and you listened, used it as a tether, and blocked out everything else. This is the first step to mastering your enhanced sight and hearing capabilities."_

"_So what's the next?"_

"_Focus on my voice, search for it in the earth, and set your sights on the place I am speaking from."_

I did as she said, completely terrified of letting myself see anything outside of my sphere of comfort again. But as I coordinated my sight and hearing together, I managed to block out all other sights and sounds, focusing on Gaea's transmission like it was a lifeline. Sure, some other visions occasionally got in the way, but I focused harder on Gaea's voice, focused on locating that voice, and suppressed the other sights. Eventually, I found where she was broadcasting from; The Great Basin Forest.

"_Found you," _I told her. "_Now what?"_

"_Come to me, my champion," _Gaea said. "_Come and experience your birthright."_

"_You mean, go back there? Leave the Helicarrier….sneak out? AGGGH!"_

The pain in my eyes began to surge again, and my vision bounced back and forth between seeing random houses in various locations, and the molecular universe. My ears were starting to pick up the sounds of cars, jets, cell phones, and everything else. The sudden pain quite literally brought me to my knees.

"_Do not push your luck, Grant," _Gaea said. "_Your abilities will continue to grow, even if you're body isn't strong enough to manage them. You can either suffer for days trying to stumble around with your powers, putting you and your friends at risk, or come to me, and let me help you through this."_

"_Gimme a sec, i'll get dressed," _I thought back to her.

I stumbled over to my closest, grabbed a pair of sweatpants, a green T-Shirt, and my Jordans. I quickly got dressed, grabbed my morpher, and left my room. Based off of the looks that I was getting from various agents, I was probably walking like I was drunk, high, and stoned all at the same time. My vision was still burning, and don't even get me started on my hearing; I caught a few bars of what was probably two Hispanic people getting it on. I managed to climb the stairs, make it to the deck of the Helicarrier, and after locking onto the forest I created, took off.

In all seriousness, Fury was gonna kill me when I got back, but that was gonna be totally worth it. Flying the way I was, unrestrained, and not on the way to a battle, was completely out of left field for me. It had only been a few days since I got my powers, and I never really got the chance to enjoy flying, to enjoy how it feels to just soar. Hell, while flying, since I could already see where I was going, I managed to solve my hearing problem by focusing on the roar of the wind. Sure, it was still the equivalent of a thunderstorm f*(#!^$ my eardrums, but at least it drowned out the rest of the world. I soared at about Mach 50, passing entire states by in under a minute. As I flew, I thought about my parents, and how they were doing at home without me, and my senses adjusted accordingly. Well, at least I knew I had some degree of control over this. While not losing sight of the forest, I caught glimpses of my parents lying in bed, just finally getting to sleep. Oh, I just remembered, I never told you about my parents. Long story short, they're nice people. My dad's an accountant, kinda on the skinny side, and my mom's a farmer; which is probably why she's built like Gina Carano. They were cuddling under the covers, my mom laying her head on my dad's chest. By they way, I am not enjoying describing this.

"Hugh?" my mom asked my dad. "You think Grant's alright?"

"I'm sure he is, pumpkin pie," my dad responded. "Grant's a tough boy, he can take care of himself just fine."

"I know he can, it's just….remember that news story about the superheroes fighting the zombies lookin' things?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I know this is me just being paranoid, but I could swear one of the kids….I think those bastards dragged my little boy into this!"

She started crying, and my heart just shattered. I wanted to punch myself in the face. Ever since S.H.I.E.L.D. came to my place, and drafted me for the team, I rarely gave my parents a second thought. It literally didn't occur to me that they might actually be worried about/miss me. I wanted to just fly down to them and give them both a hug, but I knew I couldn't. For one, I had passed Nebraska about 3 seconds ago. Also, I knew I had a responsibility to get my $#!+ together before interacting with other people again. I hated myself for it, but I passed my parents by.

"You don't know that, Eileen," my dad said, trying to calm her down. "That could've been anyone they were talking about."

"But what if it wasn't!?" my mom still sobbed. "What if Grant got hurt?! What if he's dead!? Hugh, he needed me to be there for him, and all I could think about was how he wasn't gonna get that football scholarship!"

"Eileen calm down! I understand, baby. Believe me, all i've been thinking about is the way I looked at him when I found out he was a mutant. I'm just as disgusted with myself for not immediately rallying behind him. But we can't do anything about that now. Grant will be fine, he will come home; all we can do is keep him in our prayers."

"I just want him to know that we still love him, and that he'll always be our son."

"He does know that. I know he does. He'll be fine, trust me. And when he comes home, we'll figure this out as a family, not as a problem we have to deal with."

He leaned over to kiss my mom, and I cut my focus back to the forest. What? Parents kissing each other is still gross. Oh, and just for reference, I was flying really fast, and the wind was hammering my eyes. I wasn't crying, it was wind shear. If you say otherwise, i'll kick your ass into space!

Anyway, I arrived at the forest a few moments after tuning my parents out. As soon as my feet touched the ground, everything felt different, focused even. All the sounds that I was trying hard to block out, seemed to stop existing. My out of whack vision balanced out; I couldn't see anything accept the trees, grass, and vines in front of me. I was actually in awe of how silent everything was, how the only sounds I could hear was within a mile radius, nothing more. I took a deep breath, savored the moment, and got back to business.

"Alright Gaea!" I shouted. "I'm here, now what?"

The ground beneath me started to rumble, but not like in a 2012 way, more like a 3.0 on the Richter Scale. A huge chunk of obsidian, about the size of an average closest, rose out of the ground like a flower. It started to chisel itself until it was a tube, a perfect fit for me, and opened an entry slot for me.

"_Get in," _Gaea told me.

"Do I have to?" I asked her.

"_Yes,"_

"Ok."

I stepped inside, the tube closed behind me, and then $#!+ got real! For those of you that like those death drop type rides at theme parks, you'd either absolutely love, or absolutely hate this. The obsidian tube shot into the ground like a bullet, except so much faster. Even though I was technically moving through entire layers of rock, water, and probably entering the earth's mantle, I couldn't feel a hint of resistance or pressure. My tube zoomed further and further into the earth, increasing in both speed and temperature; seriously, it was starting to get over 200 degrees in here. A few seconds later, the inside of my tube started to surge with Geo-Force, a lot of it, and my tube hit hyperspeed. I honestly couldn't tell where the hell I was anymore, just that I was moving super fast, and that I was heading somewhere that definitely wasn't a place you could find on a map. Finally, after feeling like I was in the most heart attack giving, seizure inducing thriller ride ever, my tube hit something hard, and the entry slot opened. I spilled out of it all drunken-like, and crashed head first onto the obsidian floor. To say that I was disoriented wouldn't even begin to cover it. I felt like puking, passing out, spazzing up,and then puking again; all in that exact order. I did manage to pull myself up, and came face to face with Gaea. She was still in the form of Gabrielle Union, but this time, wearing a long white strapless dress that had diamond embedded depictions of Greek warriors stabbing each other

"Oh, hello, Grant!" Gaea said with a wicked smile on her face. "Welcome to the Geo-Nexus, your new home!"

I managed to lift a finger, stutter out something completely incomprehensible, and pass out completely.

When I woke up, I noticed a couple of things. Number one, I actually managed to sleep! At least I knew I could still do that, cuz I still love me some naps. Number two, I was in a ridiculously oversized bed. I mean, go ahead and google Shaq's bed, multiply that by 10, and you get a rough picture of how big my bed was. Seriously, I could have 10 girls on here, and it wouldn't make a dent in how much space I had at my disposal. Hmmmm… Anyway, I got out of bed, and took a look at my new digs. Honestly, this place was actually kinda nice. Firstly, the room was bigger than my entire house. The walls were all black, but covered in elaborate golden Greek mosaics. Not even ten feet away from my bed, was this elaborate spread of fancy furniture. Chairs and couches that looked more expensive than my school's lunch program, a coffee table made of marble, a shelf full of small Greek artsy statuettes, and a huge mahogany door. I quickly got out of bed, put on my sneakers, and got out of that room as fast as I could. Immediately, I went down an elaborate staircase, quickly noting the same black and gold paint job in every direction, the living room set to my left, the huge space behind me, probably leading to a kitchen, ballroom, or other rich people stuff, and headed for the exit. Don't get me wrong, I like mansions just as much as the next guy, but i'm allergic to getting sued by multi millionaires for trespassing. As soon as I got out of there….well, let's just say I had to force myself not to pass out again.

Everywhere was green. No, I don't mean my vision was green, everything was literally green. I was standing on a huge patio, about the size of a McDonald's parking lot, and in every direction, the sky was literally a grass green shade, with fire/lightning bolts flashing every half a second. I could vaguely see some island-like figures in the distance, but I didn't know what they were for, or if i'd live long enough to find out. What did Gaea call this place? The Geo-Nexus? Speaking of which, where the hell was-

"Hello again, Grant!" said an awfully familiar voice. "How are we feeling?"

I turned to my side, and saw Gaea wearing the same dress, with a matching sun hat. She was sitting at a glass table under a huge umbrella, drinking something green out of a clear glass tea cup. Her smile was warm and welcoming, in a psychotic "mommy knows best" type of way. She gestured for me to take a seat in front of her, and I did.

"So?" she asked me. "How do you fare?"

"I dunno if I can honestly answer that," I responded. "But you've got a lot of answers to cough up; let's start with telling me where the hell I am."

"I told you, the Geo-Nexus. Want something to drink?"

She snapped her fingers, and a small chunk of the patio crumbled into pebbles, floated over to me, and after a flash of green, transformed into a glass tea cup. The tea cup then proceeded to fill itself with the same green drink that was in Gaea's cup. Dunno if I wanted to try it.

"Oh, go ahead!" Gaea insisted. "It's not poison, just a bit of Geo-Force distilled into a liquid substance, with a lemon/lime flavor for taste. It's actually quite energizing to mortals, you should look into marketing this; Gatorade wouldn't be able to hold a candle to it."

I lifted the cup, took a small swing….and then proceeded to chug down the rest. The lemon/lime taste was on point, like Sprite and Sierra Mist had a perfect baby. Furthermore, the drink seemed to revitalize me in every possible way. Small traces of hunger? Gone. Lingering nausea? Forget about it. I felt better in every possible way, almost made up for that death plunge it took to get me here.

"I know, right?!" Gaea smiled. "Divine!"

"Yeah, yeah," I responded, trying to play it off. "Now let's get to the brass tax."

Gaea put down her drink, sat up straight, and looked at me all serious-like.

"Fair enough," she said. "I promise to answer all of your question fully and truthfully."

"Really?" I asked her.

"I swear on the River Styx."

"That's real?"

"Yes."

"Cool. Ok then, first question. This place? What is it exactly?"

"The Geo-Nexus. The focal point in which all of the Geo-Force derives from, as well as the central hub of my consciousness. It's not exactly a physical place, nor is it entirely on the astral plane; more of an amalgam if you will. In this realm, I am omnipotent, you will learn to be the same. Also, time works differently than the way mortals perceive it."

"Wow, talk about an upgrade! Uh, speaking of time….how long have I been out?"

"Technically, you've been asleep for eight hours, but like I said, time isn't the same here. In human terms, you've only been away for maybe eight minutes."

"What!?"

"Calm down, Grant. I'll make sure you get back to your precious little hero cosplay, but we have some work to do with you first."

"What do you mean by that? And don't give me any half truths. You think I forgot about what Cyttorak said to me? Tell me everything from the beginning, including your big endgame, and how it relates to me."

Gaea paused for a second, probably regretting her promise about not keeping me in the dark about anything, before speaking again.

"Well," she started. "Judging by your rude comments about my history with my the gods, Titans, and Giants, you already know the basics about me. Born from Chaos, had kids with the sky, helped my kids overthrow him, helped Rhea's children overthrow Cronus, tried to overthrow the gods as payback, by sleeping with Tartarus, and using the Giants as a counter force…..you get it, i'm a really messed up mother."

"That's an understatement," I said.

"Didn't ask you!" Gaea snapped back. "Anyway, after a millennium to think it over, I came to terms with the fact that I was not gonna find satisfaction in futile attempts to overthrow the status quo, so I decided to make my own way of coping."

She snapped her fingers, and the air shimmered with high def images of a ripped blonde dude, wearing Greek battle armor, wielding a huge sword, slicing down what looked to be every mythological monster in the book. Seriously, the guy was slicing up snake women, impaling Minotaurs with earthen spikes, by stomping his foot on the ground, blasting G-Force bolts at Chimeras, and basically beasting the onslaught of monsters like a champ.

"Damon," Gaea mused. "My first champion. You see, Grant, after I called it off with Tartarus, he didn't like that, and decided if he couldn't have me for his personal monster creating machine, he'd destroy me, and everyone who walked the earth. He would send waves after waves of monsters to attack every corner of the earth, trying desperately to find the entrance to the Geo-Nexus."

"My tube?" I asked her.

"Not exactly. The entrance to the Geo-Nexus, as far as mortals are concerned, is in the center of Mount Othrys."

"The Titan's base?"

"Yup. Don't look at me that way, I like being in familiar places!"

"No judgement, just keep going."

"Humph. Anyway, after years of Tartarus' forces ravaging my surface, the humans barely putting up a fight, and the gods doing f*(# all to aid me, I decided to make myself a protector."

"Damon."

"Yes. From birth, Damon had a greater connection to me than most mortals. At first I didn't know how to go about this, but as he grew older, I began seeding him with Geo-Force. He didn't die, which was more than what I hoped for, and once he reached 20, I activated his powers, and bonded to him, thus making him my champion and defender."

"Was he good?"

"He was amazing! Granted, he was the exact same as you. Too focused on protecting the citizens, too naive for his own good, a complete, total, insufferable meathead. But he was a damn good warrior! Took him a while to get any real traction, but after a few rounds of training, he was traveling the world, taking down entire armies all on his own."

"So...what happened to him?"

Gaea turned stony, pun not intended, and the images of Damon kicking ass, morphed into a different view. Now, Damon was in some kind of underground temple, just barely lit by the torches inside. Everything was made of black marble, had statues of Greek figures I didn't recognize, as well as golden mosaics depicting Cronus cutting up his father all violent-like; not fun. Anyway, that's just the scenery of the place, but the real show was with Damon. He was beaten, bloodied, barely standing, and his armor was in shambles….but my God, what a beefcake! He roared something in Greek, and summoned a glowing green sword. He leapt into battle, fighting a multitude of creatures that looked like a mix between solid-like shadow, blood red fire, and octopus tentacles? Yeah, I didn't know what to make of those things, but one thing was certain, they were kicking Damon's ass. Don't get me wrong, dude was putting up one hell of a fight. He blasted G-Force in every direction, taking waves of demons down in a flash, created G-Force charged sandstorms that grinded more of the demons into nothing, and his skills with his sword were nothing short of on point. But still, the demon army was relentless, and even though he had heart, I knew Damon was a goner.

"Tartarus managed to strike an alliance with Cyttorak," Gaea said through gritted teeth. "In exchange for dominion over what would be left of the earth, Cyttorak lended his strength to Tartarus, creating a new breed of demon. They managed to find the entrance to the Geo-Nexus, and I summoned Damon to my aid. He fought with spirit, Grant, but I made the mistake of assuming he would never be at a disadvantage, that he would never want for strength or power. I didn't push him to be stronger, to be ambitious enough to wield the full power of the earth. I...just watch."

I directed my attention back to the projection, and man was it hard to look at. Damon was getting his ass handed to him like crazy. One demon managed to get a good shot off on him dead center of his chest. Damon managed to recover, and take down some more baddies, but it wasn't long until another demon quite literally, stuck its claws through him, causing him to vomit up blood, and plant him into the ground. Damon tried to use his earthbending to get free, but it was already too late. The demons began to swarm him, sticking their talons into whatever part of him they could reach, basically crucifying the poor dude. He screamed in both agony and defiance, and I could almost feel Gaea welling up. It looked like one of the demons was about to step up to the plate and finish the job, but it paused, contorted in weird, painful looking ways, and changed it's whole structure. Now it was big and beefy, with dark red skin, wearing black demonic armor, with huge red tentacles jutting out of it's back. Its head was the same mix of black/red billowing shadow, but with a skeleton face occasionally forming in between the dark fire.

"_I APPLAUD YOUR EFFORT, GAEA!" _the thing spoke, and boy did it represent.

It's voice was like someone had roughly mixed the voice of Cyttorak, I remembered what that f*(#head sounded like, and the voice of pure blackness. The voice was beyond death, it was like the deepest darkest level of Hell had gotten deeper, letting this thing out.

"_10 YEARS YOU'VE MANAGED TO SUPPRESS MY POWER, BUT OH HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN!"_

Damon was quietly chanting something in Greek, his eyes flickering between dark brown and green, but Tarttorak, best fusion name I got, didn't seem to notice or care. As he did his classic bad guy monologuing thing, talking about how inevitable Gaea's defeat was, how the world would soon bow to him, and his unstoppable legion, Damon was having a conversation of his own.

"_Mother Earth,_" he thought to Gaea, his words somehow being translated to english. "_Please hear my prayer_."

"_I hear thee, my son!_" Gaea actually said aloud, her voice resonating across an at least five mile radius. "_Stand fast, I shall revitalize thee_!"

"_No, Gaea, I am finished._"

"_Thou are not! I can save thee, I can_-"

"_No! It is too late for me! We thought we had more time to prepare, we were wrong. The only thing we can do now, is be certain that Tartarus and Cyttorak will be delayed in their evil desire for conquest_!"

"_Damon_!"

"_I would thank thee, Gaea. Thou gave me the opportunity to be a great hero! Though I may not have my praises sung like the great Heracles, or my feats immortalized like the great Perseus, I will always be grateful to thee, Gaea. Together, we felled mighty demons, saved countless lives, and paved the way for humanity to survive. Find another, my sweet Mother Earth, do not mourn for me, I go to the fields of Elysium."_

Before Gaea could respond, Damon shouted an enchantment in Greek, and the ground shook. I dunno what he said, but i'm pretty sure it was somewhere along the lines of _F*(# THESE MOTHER F*(#&amp;6 UP! _

Damon went from zero, to ten billion in like half a second. His body glowing with so much G-Force, even I knew it would've killed me if I tried harness that much energy.

"_FIND ANOTHER, GAEA!" _Damon roared to her. "_MAKE HIM BETTER THAN I WAS!"_

The pent up energy exploded, and the projection was blown apart. I looked over, and saw Gaea crying; Gaea was actually crying. I started to get up, everything in me screaming to just give her a big hug, but she put a hand up.

"I am alright, Grant," Gaea said. "Just reliving painful memories is all."

"I'm sorry, G," I said. "I'm sorry about Damon, he was a cool dude."

"Yes, yes he was, and it was those foul abominations that took him from me!"

"Is that what Cyttorak was talking about? What happened to Damon?"

"Yes, and I thank you for destroying his link to the physical world."

"I didn't enjoy that, Gaea, I just did what I had to do to keep the stone out of Magneto's hands."

"Irrelevant,I have my vengeance. Anyway, with Damon's dying breath, he managed to use 10% of the G-Force, to blow Tartarus and Cyttorak back to their realms. They were too busy celebrating their victory, that they forgot the fact that they were not properly anchored to this world. When Damon destroyed their army, they were left without hosts, and more important, the strength to try another assault. Tartarus hasn't been able to find the strength to visit this dimension since that day; Damon saved the world, at the cost of his own life."

"That's what heroes do, Gaea. We fight, and are willing to die to protect the people."

"How insufferably stupid."

"Whatever. So, why do you need me?"

"I told you, the dilemma with Stones of Olympus is only the first of many more trials to come. I needed a champion to fight for me. So here you are."

"Gaea, don't play with me. You brought me here for a purpose. And while I do realize that you can actually care about people, you still don't strike me as someone who does something purely out of the good of her heart. So spill it, what's your endgame here?"

She raised her hand, and several clumps of stone formed into perfectly round balls, all orbiting around a green mini-sun. One of the balls glowed green, while the others remained brown.

"Expansion." Gaea plainly said, as the brown rocks started to turn green one by one. "You see, while I didn't know it then, I can expand my consciousness, my power, to other terras. I need you to master the full spectrum of the Geo-Force first, not to mention actually bond with the entire planet, but afterwards, I can use you to spread my power across entire galaxies; you will be my beautiful centurion that will spawn my glorious empire."

Damn, this chick had some big time goals.

"Don't get me wrong," I started. "I'm always up for a good planetering, but...why the hell should I listen to you?"

"Because it's good for the both of us," Gaea responded. "It works out in my favor, because i'll be able to exist without any being rivaling my power. Tartarus and Cyttorak will never challenge me again once I have the power of a legion of solar systems at my disposal. At the same time, the stronger I get, the stronger you get. You could be a god to the mortals, but you seem content to serve, rather than rule. Still, i'll play along; you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Deal?"

"I don't see why not."

I shook her hand, and her eyes flashed bright green. Before I could attest to it, Gaea had me warped somewhere else. It wasn't anywhere special, just a long flat land mass, about the size of a small college campus. In the distance, I could see what I assumed to be my mansion, which was WAY bigger than I originally thought it was; the thing was literally built into a mountain the size of the Alps! As much as I wanted to make googly eyes at my new place, somebody else had other plans. I noticed that the ground beneath me was intensifying in gravity, way more G's than I was used to. Before I could ask Gaea, who was nowhere in sight, what was going on, a mountain, yes a literal mountain, materialized about 10 feet over my head, and dropped on top of me. I instinctively raised my hands to keep it from crushing me into jelly, but OH MAN WAS THIS THING HEAVY! It didn't strike me until that moment, but my limit was still about 100,000 tons; this mountain, even though it was a small one, was at least twice that weight. Oh, and the fact that the gravity was keeping me in place...the icing on the cake. Hell, I probably would've just blasted the damn thing off of me, or use my earthbending to toss it away, but none of my other powers seemed to be working.

"_GAEA!" _I desperately thought to her. "_WHAT THE HELL?! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL?!"_

"_I need you stronger," _Gaea simply said. "_At your current state, all you can manage to harness is a measly 2% of the earth's power."_

"_I'VE ONLY HAD THEM FOR AN HOUR!"_

"_No excuse! You desire to be a hero, fine! But i'll be damned if I let you suffer the same fate as Damon! Before I let you continue that dead end, self-righteous, spandex clad lifestyle, i'm gonna make sure you have the grit to pull it off!"_

" _First off, I wear armor, not spandex. And Careful there, Earth Mama, you almost sounded like you cared for a second there."_

"_Debatable."_

"_So what happens now?"_

"_Now, you stay under that rock for as long as you have to. I've set a marker about 100 feet in the air. When you become strong enough to resist 75X the earth's gravity, find the strength to lift a 300,000 ton rock, and fly 100 feet into the air, then we can take a step forward."_

"_So you're just gonna leave me like this?!"_

"_Basically. Have fun!"_

She cut off the connection, and I was left with the weight of a continent on top of my head. How long was I under that rock? Too. F*(#!&amp;$. Long. It was a slow process actually finding the strength to get up off of the ground. First, I had to endure what felt like hours of trying to stand up in 75X earth's gravity. After that, since I couldn't fly, much less jump, I did squats. Yes, with a mountain over my head, I did squats. At least I knew my kicks would be on point after this. I did that for like 2 hours, until I felt like my legs were gonna burst open. I actually had to sit down for a bit, and carefully lay on my back while I waited for my legs to recover. In the meantime, I did bench presses. Lifting 300,000 tons with just my arms was definitely hard work; like, impossibly hard. At first, it took me a full minute just to do five reps. If I never remembered having to work for anything else in my life, i'd remember that for months to come. It took about five minutes for my legs to get back up to shape, which was plenty of time for my arm game to get its act together. By the time my legs were back up to scratch, I was able to reps like nobody's business. Finally, after like a bazillion hours, Fury was gonna murder me, I stood up, did one last squat, and leapt into the air. You'd think it take me a good few leaps to break 75X the earth's gravity, but after spending hours doing lifts, squats, and being a pedestal for a giant rock, gravity wasn't $#!+ anymore. I took off, actually breaking the ground beneath me, and reached the 100 foot mark in less than a second.

"YEAH!" I screamed aloud. "WHAT YOU GOTTA SAY ABOUT THAT, GAEA?!"

She might as well have attached a battleship to my ankles, cuz I plummeted back to the ground hard.

"Now," she said, actually squatting next to me under the mountain. "Do the same thing, at 100X earth's gravity, and with 50,000 tons added on; have fun!"

She patted my face, and flashed away.

Doing this again, while definitely more than a little stressful, was a piece of cake; in theory that is. See, I had it all down to a formula. First came the hours it took to get back to my feet, followed by hours of squats, another solid hour of bench pressing, and finally, the leap to success. Which was quickly followed by Gaea turning up the G'S by 25, adding another 50,000 tons to the mountain, and the whole process started all over again.

"_Yo, Gaea?" _I asked her while I was on my third set of gravity training. "_Maybe i'm going crazy, but I kinda feel like i've been here for like, half a day. Not that I don't enjoy your training, but I do have a life to get back to."_

"_Don't worry about that?" _she thought back to me. "_Like I said, time works differently in the Geo-Nexus."_

"_How different?" _

"_The way I want it to, different."_

"_Huh?"_

"_I can manipulate the G-Force to condense time and space, which is why entire mountains can exist in the same place, yet still be hundreds of miles apart. Regarding the way that works in the sense of time? Well, let's just say that i'm manipulating the Geo-Force to such an extreme degree, that for every hour in your world, an entire year goes on in here."_

"_SAY WHAT?!"_

"_Yup, and if you do the math, which I did, we have only six short years to train."_

"_Six years?! Gaea, i'll be a million years old by the time i'm done with this!"_

"_Do not be so dramatic, Grant. You will not age in the Geo-Nexus, and mere hours will have passed in the physical world. You have nothing to worry about, now keep on lifting."_

I wanted to argue with Gaea so bad, but I could tell that she was having none of it at all.

To her credit, she didn't keep me in gravity training forever. After I was able to escape 300X earth's gravity, and lift over 700,000 tons, she let me off the hook. Still, it wouldn't be Gaea if she actually gave me a second to rest. I was transported to some type of coliseum, which gave me a really bad vibe. I noticed that the G's didn't get any lighter, in fact, I could swear Gaea had bumped it up just a little. Still, that was just a nitpick. What really got me weirded out, was when a bald Chinese guy, wearing a shaolin robe, flashed in the coliseum just a few feet in front of me. He seemed….dead. Don't get me wrong, the guy looked healthy enough, but his eyes were blanker than humanly possible, almost robot-like.

"Gaea?" I asked aloud. "Why? Just….why?"

"Because," she said, materializing on one of the stadium seats. "You need to learn how to fight; like, a lot. Monk, what's-his-face here? He's a construct, a physical manifestation of all knowledge Kung-Fu related."

"My friend already taught me Kung-Fu," I responded. "I don't need some old dead guy to show me the ropes again."

"You don't have a choice, Grant. I didn't give you one. Besides, your friend taught you ONLY the ropes. All the other good stuff? She hasn't taught you that yet. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to learn everything about Kung-Fu ever from this guy, then onto every other martial art the world has to offer; or at least a lot of them. Your training has increased your capacity for Geo-Force manipulation only by 3%. And mastering the full power of the earth relies on more than just strength and skill. It takes being of a calm heart and mind, something martial arts practice helps you learn. So get your pants off the ground and get ready, you are in for a rough couple of years."

The guy motioned for me to follow his movements, and I did my best. He didn't talk as we trained together, but either because he was connected to the G-Force, or I was just good at reading body language, his speech didn't need to be verbal. For entire days in G-Force time, we worked on my flexibility, balance, and base level agility; all of which involved heavy duty stretching, sit-up, push-ups, and lots of laps. We did a lot of yoga/meditation, trying to increase the flow of my chi to my chakra points of rainbow magic, or some bull$#!+ like that. Oh, and I was still cut off from using the G-Force, in addition to the gravity upping itself by five every other day or so. Anyway, after an entire week of warm-up, Monk Gyatso, yeah, I gave him a name, started to work with me on the five basic forms of animal Kung-Fu. In case you didn't know, cuz I sure as hell didn't, the five basic forms of animal Kung-Fu are based on the tiger, leopard, crane, snake, and dragon. For the next week, without rest, food, or water, Gyatso taught me the basic tiger forms. The first was Golden Tiger Fist. Golden Tiger, just like all of the different Tiger forms, was about using your fingers and palms to inflict extremely fast and powerful hits on opponents. Tearing/clawing gestures were used in vulnerable areas, like the neck and face, but I preferred the direct strike to the chest. Gyatso taught me different types of counters, blocks, usually involving circular hand motions, and once we got to Black Tiger Fist, extensive footwork. It would take me a week on average to completely master a new form, and since I don't have that much time to explain EVERY form of fighting I learned, i'll just give you the basics.

Leopard style was about using quick strikes and with the leopard paw, to inflict pain in vulnerable parts of the body, followed by the kill; yes, I actually learned how to kill with my bare hands. Crane style was about using distance to your advantage. It was about using your reach with the arms and legs to get in fast strikes, and use the crane punches to block and attack, while also using the legs to help your movements flow into each other. Snake style to me, was the most infuriating to learn. Rather than relying on power, snake style was about using quick and accurate had and feet movement. It was about blocking/dodging, and using your speed and flexibility to keep your opponent off-balance, and capitalize. I prefer a direct strategy, but I at least recognized how important it was to learn this style. Finally, Dragon style utilized the dragon talon and circular movements, as well as the full fist, forearms, and quick kicks to get the drop on your opponent. Oh, and it was really effective when you used moves from other animal styles to add to it, so cool for that.

At first, even though learning how to fight was kinda crucial to the whole hero thing, I didn't really see the point to all of this. Hell, one of the most frustrating things about this training, was that I couldn't move to another form of fighting, unless I beat Gyatso in the one he taught me. That may not sound like much, but trust me, this guy was the ultimate boss battle on steroids. Take our fight with tiger style. In the first fight, I threw one claw punch, and after blocking it, and twisting my hand, Gyatso brought an elbow down on my forearm, hip tossed me, and hit me dead in the chest with a tiger claw, sending me careening into a wall. He never gave me a moment's rest, and even though I managed to block, dodge, and counter a good handful of his moves, I still got my ass handed to me more often than I would've liked to admit. Finally, after like three days of losing, I finally manage to beat him, by using quick and powerful kicks to his knees, blocking his counter strikes, and while mixing a few wrestling moves in there, managed to suplex Gyatso, give him a powerful reverse kick, and rush in with a powerful tiger strike to the chest.

Now, keep in mind, I was still cut off from the G-Force, and I had no intention of doing this whatsoever, but when I hit Gyatso with that last punch, an honest to God green tiger head shot out of my arm! It even roared for cryin' out loud! Gyatso flew into a coliseum wall, actually cracking it, and I made a move to run over and help him.

"Don't bother!" Gaea called down to me. "He's not alive, he didn't even feel that!"

"Oh," I said plainly. "Right, forgot about that. But quick question? You saw the tiger come out of my hand right? I'm not going insane, right?"

"Nope, that was all you; i'm actually impressed."

"But how? You cut me off from the G-Force."

"But I can't cut you off from your own chi."

"Huh?"

"Just because you're employed by a Greek Elder Goddess, dosen't mean that you can't dabble in practices from other cultures. I'm actually known as many other names to the Romans, Norse, Chinese, you name any spiritual practice, there is most likely a name for me. Chi is a natural form of energy everyone possesses, Grant. By engaging in martial arts, you're learning how to access it, and increase your Geo-Force manipulation capacity. And regarding the whole animal thing? Humans aren't the only ones born with a connection to me. Animals make up a small percentage of my collective power, which is why your chi strikes take the form of the various studies you are training under."

"So, how much did I improve?

"By 0.5%"

"What!?"

"What? Strength isn't the only thing to mastering the Geo-Force, but it is the main thing. And do not throw a tantrum, boy; this will help you in the long run, now go back to fighting."

So yeah, you get it. After mastering all the other animal forms, I managed to spit out some kind of animal head with a kick or punch; and even then I was only getting started.

Over the course of countless weeks, and yes, about two years, I mastered more forms of martial arts than most people will in there entire lives. I learned Preying Mantis, horse, bull, wolf, eagle, bear, and lion style Kung-Fu. I learned Bafaquan, BaYingQuan, Chāquán, Long Fist, Dragon Fist, Jeet Kune Do, and basically anything that had a quan, bao, zi, chang, or do in it's name. I learned weapons based martial arts too. Kendo, Bojutsu, Silat, and Eskrima, just to name a few. I learned some popular American fighting styles such as S.C.A.R.S., Shuri-ryu, and Marine Corps Martial Arts. Yeah, I know. Basically, by the time my three years were up, I had literally learned almost 100 different styles of martial arts, and even without my powers, could probably kick Jet Li's ass in a fight.

After that was over with, I thought things might calm down a bit, but after my last master faded away, Gaea would always give me masters that matched the cultural origin of the fighting style, someone else popped up.

He was tall, about six feet, with a tan, long flowing black hair, and huge muscles. He had one of those familiar faces, like the ones you see on TV. I don't wanna call him Samoan, Hawaiian, or Middle Eastern, but let's just say he looked like Jason Momoa and Roman Reigns made a very beautiful He-Man together.

"Grant," Gaea called down. "Meet Achilles."

My jaw dropped to the floor.

"Achilles?!" I almost shouted. "As in, Greek legendary badass, dude that got shot in the ankle, Brad Pitt played so good, Achilles?"

"First off, that movie was garbage. Second, yes."

"Oookaaay…..why is he here?"

"Achilles is the greatest warrior whoever lived; no other hero, Greek, Roman, or any other of any pantheon comes close to his prowess with weapons."

""What about Ares, Thor, Athena, or any of the other war gods?"

"Gods do not count!"

"Ok, gezz!"

"Anyway, Achilles is here to tutor you in every style of armed combat there is, besides modern day fire arms."

"But I already learned all that stuff during martial arts practice. I could out duel Nightcrawler with a sword, kick Allyson's butt with a spear, and I know how to shoot a bow and arrow; sure, i'm no Hawkeye, but i'd get by with the skill I have."

"Irrelevant. Achilles developed strategies and tactics with combat that were buried along with him; skills most warriors would dream about possessing. You may be an adept fighter now, but there is always room to improve; so start improving."

A golden knife flashed into Achilles' hand, as well as mine's. He motioned for me to follow him, and we got to work.

I'll say this about Gaea….she's usually right about stuff. For one, I never learned how to fight with a knife, until I learned military martial arts. Yet even then, Achilles would've carved any modern day Marine into a Christmas him. His style of fighting was quick, precise, and deceptive. Rather than trying to lodge my knife into the heart of my opponent, Achilles taught me about more effective ways of killing. For example, instead of going for the chest, the wrists, arms ,thighs, and legs were much better options; can't wield a knife if you're out of blood. He taught me multiple ways to make my opponents over reach and leave themselves open. Also, how to fake my opponents out, and use their own momentum against them. We practiced knife fighting for maybe a week or so, before Achilles challenged me to a final duel. You'd think that it'd be extremely hard to shank a master of weapons, but Achilles didn't have about three years of martial arts skill. He managed to swipe at me once before I ducked, grabbed his arm, punched his elbow, breaking it entirely, and swinging around for a savage stab to his head.

Over the course of half a year, I really sharpened my weapons skills. I learned how to effectively fight with a sword and shield; which was frustrating as hell, can't see how Jason does it. I learned sword and spear fighting, which was just as frustrating, if not more. I learned dual wielding with knives, swords, axes, clubs, morning stars, even mixed combinations like my signature axe and sword thing. I'll admit, I got my ass handed to me more often than i'd have liked to, especially with that sword and shield combo, but I eventually managed to get my flow right.

Training only got more intense from there.

Now that I was done with all the preliminary stuff, Gaea took me off of G-Force rehab, and immediately put me to work. The first month involved constant earthbending training. I quickly learned that moving my arms and legs weren't exactly a necessary part of that power, just a crutch I gave myself. In fact, Gaea made sure that I was not allowed to use my body to move the rocks; and they ranged from the smallest of pebbles, to an entire mountain. She challenged me in ways like creating sandstorms, and creating hundreds of rock soldiers, which could be used to host small parts of Gaea's consciousness, essentially giving me a one stop army shop.

Gaea didn't bother to test my prowess with wielding G-Force. She said that I had the construct business down packed, and that I was no slob in the imagination department. Besides, once she saw my ability to wipe out small states, like Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maine with the maximum effort of G-Force I could fit into a single energy ball, she was satisfied.

Now comes the really cool part. I'll try to dumb it down, cuz Gaea sure knows how to be all super smart talkin' when she wants to be. First off, I had the ability to increase or decrease my size; like Ant-Man. Whoa! Now before you call bull$#!+, foul, or OP, please just hear me out. I was able to adjust my size through a convoluted process of using G-Force to lock onto a certain element, like a pebble, grain of sand, or molecule of sand, and adapt my size to fit it. Yup, if I focused on the rocks beneath me, I could become as small as they were. At least that was the crutch I had to use until I could just shrink to whatever size I wanted to on my own. Growing was a bit tougher. To do that, I had to make my molecules expand with G-Force, which I had to gauge by using a light layer of G-Force, only visible to me, to create a stencil/measuring figure. Doing this was not only hard, but EXTREMELY dangerous. See, it wasn't just my size that I had to increase/decrease, it was everything inside too. We're talkin' bones, blood, organs, brain matter, everything. If I didn't increase my blood to match my bigger body, i'd go into cardiac arrest. If my heart didn't shrink enough with me, it would be too big for my body. Hell, if my ribs weren't properly adjusted, they'd either be too thin, or too hard. To prepare, Gaea had me work on changing the size of pebbles for days at a time, before letting me work on my body. First we started small; toes and fingers. After I got the hang of that, we moved on to the whole picture...kinda. The next day or so was about getting in touch with myself, and not in the dirty way. I used G-Force to perform an X-Ray, for lack of better term. Every blood vessel, bone, artery, vein, I did a complete analysis. Once I had a complete understanding of what should be what, I did my first shrink test. It was a minor one, only decreasing myself by about 3 feet, but by was it an experience. It was like condensing myself through a tube that I should've been way too big for; and don't get me started on the nausea. Still, it worked. Nothing was missing, too big, too small; I was golden. We practiced this power for a few more days, while I pressed the limits of how big/small I could grow. As it turns out, I could reach 60ft without hurting myself in the growing factor, and shrink down to the size of a grain of sand without going subatomic; that was a whole different ball game. While I was small, or should I say at my smallest, my strength, and durability increased by a good 40%, making me strong enough to lift mountains, even as grain sized Grant. While growing, my strength basically doubled; I could probably chuck a skyscraper into space. The only catch with these powers were that I could only stay grown/shrunk for about 10 minutes at a time without hurting myself. According to Gaea, the more I used these abilities, the longer i'd be able to maintain those forms, but as for now, I was on a ten minute leash.

"Let's see," Gaea mused to herself. "We still have a good year left before I have to send you back."

"Oh, joy," I sarcastically said.

"What is the matter, Grant? I thought you liked spending time with me."

"Can we just get on with this please?!"

"Ok, fine, Mr. Snappy Pants, whatever."

Why the sudden attitude you may ask? Well...it wasn't sudden. Look, i'm not gonna come in and say I wasn't grateful for Gaea giving me all these pointers, and helping me master my abilities, but….five years is a long time. During that time, I didn't age a single second. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I didn't rest; I didn't need to. That was kind of the worst thing about it. I felt inhuman, not even in the mutant sense, but more of the 'i'm way too powerful to actually be from earth' sense. I knew who I was, I didn't exactly change as far as personality went, although being trapped in time limbo did make me feel awkwardly older, trapped, under house arrest, and claustrophobic; that didn't sit well with me. So yeah, I was a bit cranky, but I don't think Gaea gave a damn.

"This ability," Gaea started again. "Requires complete and total knowledge of all earthen metals, precious and other. So, sorry not sorry, but i'm going to upload the information to your brain."

I didn't even have time to brace myself before a library of info hit my brain like a truckload of bricks. Immediately, I knew everything about every metal ever. Not just what they were, but other nerdy things like their atomic structure, atomic mass, number of electrons it had, boiling point, melting point, even the date it was discovered. I collapsed to a knee, rubbing my temples until they proceeded to top hurting like the dickens; chalk up one more thing I disliked about being trapped with Gaea for years at a time.

"Before you chew me out," Gaea stopped my rant. "Let me explain. One of the best things about being Mother Earth, is that everything that is beneath me, everything that has to come out of the ground, is unbreakably tied to me….and Hades. In any case, glass, precious metals, Titanium, Steel, Ore, everything with earthen elements, are yours to command and create."

"Huh?" I asked her. "I get the control part, but what about the creation thing?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. Much in the same way you can make a tree spring out of the ground, so to can you generate metals. The only difference is it works through transmutation. You think I was throwing darts when I uploaded the knowledge of the top 100 metallurgists in the world to your head? Nope. In order to transmute one metal or rock to another, you have to have a complete understanding of that element, and adjust the atomic structure, mass, and electrons to change it. We're gonna have to work on that very thoroughly though. Like I said, you have the capability to split atoms that relate to earthen properties, and I really don't want an atomic explosion in my prime space; it disrupts my Feng Shui."

Oookay. Not gonna get into why Mother Earth gives a $#!+ about Feng Shui.

Anyway, you probably get the gist. Another year of new power training. Honestly though, this one was the most stressful. First, changing rock to copper, is no easy feat. I had to train my vision to subatomic levels, which was the only time Gaea had ever bothered to help me master my vision. The way that worked was through a mix of muscle contraction, and mental focus. If I strained/relaxed my eye muscles, while making it very clear about what it was that I wanted to see, my vision would be fine. Oh, and because we finally, got around to it, Gaea got me started on a on a good hearing training same principles of my enhanced vision applied to this too. Gaea tested me in many ways to get used to it. First, she multiplied her voice hundreds of times over, letting them all echo throughout the air. After getting used to the roar, Gaea instructed me on how to block them all out, focus on certain voices, and even hear things from 100 miles away; oh, and this was all while I was trying to master my King Midas ability. Changing one element to another was the hardest thing ever. First, I had to lock onto the neutrons, electrons, etc., and with a microscopic layer of G-Force. Next, I had to pull them away, while simultaneously moving others in. To put it in perspective, if you've ever had to unlock the small clasp of a necklace, and put it around someone's neck, struggling physically and mentally not to let the clasp close to early, you get a gist of what I was going though; just on a wider, smaller scope. I changed rock to copper, Titanium to gold, sand to glass, even glass to diamond. Gaea worked me through all the other complicated stuff such as multiplying the atoms to make more of the material I wanted, bending the material into any shape I wanted, and changing the material to liquid/solid form.

"Hey, G?" I asked her while I was controlling two streams of liquid diamond. "Speaking of metal, how come i'm immune to getting stabbed by everything except Adamantium, Vibranium, and that black metal that Dragon Empress, and Goblin stabbed me with?"

"Ahh," she started. "Ok, that's the problem with your age. While a lot of your powers does stem from personal training, age does increase power, and give certain attributes. Regarding the Adamantium, you just aren't old enough, and won't start to develop resistance to that until you are at least twenty. Vibranium, which gets stronger with the more vibration it absorbs, tears at your molecular structure; the same can be said for extremely powerful magical metals such as Uru, Scabrite, that black metal, and Adamantine, Olympian/Heavenly metal. These metals unlike magical blasts and spells, are unaffected by your magical resistance, and can cut you simply on the merit that they are extremely durable metals; only the heat of dying stars can melt them."

"So, i'm screwed?"

"Not necessarily. In time, you'll be able to manipulate these elements as easily as you can manipulate the earth; but the amount of G-Force needed to do that is beyond you at the moment. Once you become strong enough, you'll be able to break them down, rearrange their structures, even create body shields strong enough to protect you from their fatal stings; but for now, just don't piss of any Asgardians, Wolverine, or Wakandans."

"I'll put it on my gold standards. Oh, and one more question. I'm totally ok when lightning strikes me, i'm totally cool when magical undead lightning strikes me, how come electromagnetism gives me the business?"

"_Oh. Well. Ummm…. When Ouranos and I were together, he would use that to... make my being unfocused."_

"_Oh my God! Electromagnetism hurts me, because it turns you on?!"_

"_That is a crude, accurate way of putting it."_

I shut of the conversation immediately, not knowing whether to laugh or throw up. Anyway, after I was done with the whole liquefy/solidifying metals, Gaea was gonna teach me how to actually change my skin to whatever metal I wanted it to be. This would improve my durability, strength, allow me to manipulate my body on a molecular level, which I could use to change my arms into weapons, although it would cut my ability to fly/run super fast; although I would still be able to leap over tall skyscrapers, and out run a Lamborghini at top speed. But before we could get around to that, thunder, unnatural thunder, sounded off, and the Geo-Nexus started to change from green, to fluctuating black n' red, as a dark haze started to pollute it. Even though I was in the Geo-Nexus with Gaea, I felt her spirit droop and weaken, almost like she was coming down with a cold.

"_Gaea!" _I desperately thought to her. "_What's going on, what's wrong"_

She didn't answer. Even worse, the dark haze was spreading all over the Geo-Nexus like a virus; I usually don't get afraid, but this was freaking me the hell out. The dark clouds started to rage, getting so fast and loud until they almost started to sound like a roaring monster. Red lightning started to flash violently, one of them almost striking me in the head, as humanoid shaped shadows started to rain down like a hailstorm. Suddenly, as quickly as she vanished, Gaea came back with a vengeance. The skies fluctuated green, and bolts of G-Force started to fight back against the dark clouds, and shadow people.

"_GRANT!" _Gaea almost gasped at me. "_I NEED YOU TO LISTEN TO EVERYTHING I'M ABOUT TO SAY! NO JOKING, NO SARCASM, JUST LISTEN!"_

"_OK!" _I responded. "_WHAT'S UP?!"_

"_I was a fool. I thought Tartarus done with me for good... but he has never halted his desire for my destruction. I used all of my consciousness to keep the Geo-Nexus stranded from time, t-to give you more time to master your abilities…. but while doing so... I left the entrance to the Geo-Nexus vulnerable...unprotected. I don't know who Tartarus has j-j-joined with….but he is clearly not alone. Grant...the Geo-Nexus is not just your base of operations...it is me, my heart. If you are killed here….the earth itself will die...and everyone on it. I-I-I can combat the portal enchantments that Tartarus is using to invade...but I need you to survive. Tartarus will….will send the most vile, the most powerful monsters out of himself to kill you….fight them off….you have the power to defend yourself...to save the world. Please….do not fail me."_

With that, Gaea went silent, the black n' red clouds started to overtake the atmosphere, and portals literally cracked the sky.

I remember watching footage about the time The Avengers first fought in New York City 10 years ago. How they had to fight those alien things from the big portal that shot out of the sky; it was all over TV every year for Avengers Day. Why did those guys get to have it so easy? Yeah, I know, they hauled ass to keep the city safe, but from where I was standing, their battle looked like a water gun fight. Out of the sky, I kid you not, ten demonic portals made a mile long hexagon, spewing out hundreds of demonic creatures every second! This was gonna be a hoot and a half.

I created a double blade axe out of stone, changed it to Titanium, and after igniting it with G-Force, slashed down some kind of six foot Cthulhu mother f*(#$^. I would've morphed, and used my own battle gear, but my morpher didn't seem to work while stranded between space and time; looks like i'd have to improvise.

One thing I learned in my….wait for it….. 9 WHOLE MONTHS of fighting, was that all of these demons came in various shapes sizes and forms. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't taking selfies with them or nothin'; I was moving way too fast for that, but I did notice that these demons were like snowflakes. No two were exactly alike. I remember killing one that had spider legs coming out of its back, another that had a scorpion pincer, hell, one of em' actually was a scorpion version of a centaur. I slashed down a few Minotaurs, Hydras, had to remember to burn the heads, Chimeras, and every other mythological monster you could find. And again, this wasn't just some 10 minute warm-up battle back at S.H.I.E.L.D., from my perspective, I was battling nonstop for nine months!

So how did I survive? Well, first off, I was strong, fast, and had over three years of martial arts practice; so there was that. However, for the first month of battling, there was a HUGE emphasis on speed. I was running/flying around non stop, slashing maybe 300 demons per second. Thanks to Blitz Mode, none of the could touch me, and thank God none of them seemed to be able to go faster than a golf cart. If you're wondering why I didn't just use the G-Force to waste them, well….I kinda couldn't. This was a complete shot in the dark. Because the Geo-Nexus was so polluted, so….more black than green, my connection to it was corrupted. Meaning no city destroying level blasts. I could still earthbend, transmute substances, and use my plant powers, but G-Force energy blasts….not happening; I learned that the hard way. Yeah, after running around in circles, slicing and dicing anything within reach, I got the cool idea that involved me setting off a few explosive waves to give me some breathing room. The problem? I basically channeled toxic demon energy into my body, making it shut down after a huge spasmodic ordeal. Oh, and if you don't think the 1,000++ demons didn't make me suffer for that, then you need to start reading bad guy 101. The monsters swarmed, and tired to savagely slaughter me. I use the word try, because they were no closer to tearing through my flesh than an average butter knife was. Don't get me wrong, it prickled a little, but I was in no real danger; that was until I took a few red lightning bolts to the face. Those f*(#*%$ hurt like hell, and for a good five minutes, I wasn't able to do a damn thing about it; my body was still trying to recover. When I did manage to get up, it wasn't without work. I had to create an earth bunker around myself, and after creating a spiked rock dome, send it flying in every direction; the spikes would hit something. I called my titanium axe back to my hand, and struck the ground with it. Spikes erupted out of the ground, impaling may be a good 500 demons at once. I willed the spikes, enough to cover a football field, to launch into the air, like missiles. Another 500 or more demons were snuffed out; yup, I would definitely say that I got the upper hand back. For the rest of the first month of battle, with the exceptions of a few earthbending moves, zoom, zoom, zoom was the name of the game. No time to show off, no time to dwell on a single fight, just a simple run/fly, slash, and then rinse and repeat. Was I scared? Yup. $#!+less in fact. I had heard stories about people who had died, went to Hell, and came back. Usually they told stories of horrendous tortures, grotesque monsters, and the feeling of hopelessness. While I couldn't say that I had it worse than they did, I can definitely say that I saw some demonic faces that would haunt my dreams for a good few years; why else do you think I was so adamant about moving fast?

After the first month was up, and she sure took her sweet time doing it, Gaea managed to shut down one of the portals. It happened explosively, like a demonic fireworks display, followed by the portal collapsing in on itself, putting on a tremendous amount of gravity, sucking in any nearby demons, and stranding the ones that were closer to the island I was fighting on. The Geo-Nexus lessened in black/red ash clouds, and while I still couldn't safely use my energy blasts, the place definitely was getting back on track. Hell, for a a few seconds, the demons actually stopped trying to swarm me, and looked up at one of their precious portal being dismantled. I thought that might be the end of it, that the demons might just say f*(# it, and go back home; one of these days i'll be right about these things. From a probability standpoint, I have to be right at least once.

Unfortunately, now was not one of these times. The demon army bored their eyes into me, I made a half hearted attempt to look fierce, and the demons attacked in a huge unrelenting wave. I quickly flew under the island I was under, used my earthbending powers to split it apart, and reconstruct the two land masses into giant hands. I moved my arms, and the hands followed suit, clapping themselves together time and time again, killing at least 1,000 demons at once like mosquitoes. I had to do a lot of backhands, swatting away, and use my giant rock hands for shields whenever the lightning bolt started to act up again, but for the most part, I made good on the small advantage I had; managed to keep it up for a whole day before I had to retreat into what would keep me in the fight for a whole 4 months.

I flew around slicing up demons left and right, just barely avoiding most of the lightning strikes, and managed to find my way to another huge landmass; seriously, this place has more islands than the Caribbean. This one was big. Like, insert biggest football stadium you can think of, big. As I landed on the surface, sending a volley of spiked rocks up to impale another handful of demons, I got an idea. First, I opened a hole in the ground, sinking straight to the middle of the island, and before the demons could try mining me out of there, I did some hardcore renovating. See, once Gaea closed one of the portals, it opened up my powers just a little more; and while I couldn't do anything drastic, like energy bombs, I could still to some good old fashioned Geo-Genesis. Sucked for these guys, cuz when you have a year to master earthbending, you really learn how to make rocks multiply like bunnies. In less than a second, my stadium sized slab of rock, multiplied to the size of Central Park. Oh, and that wasn't the worst of it. I willed vines, huge vines, big enough to wrap around skyscrapers, with wicked sharp thorns in them, to sprout out of the island. I was only able to make four of them, but I immediately put them to work, making the swing back and forth, killing any poor demon caught in their reach. In addition to that, because I learned how to mad multitask down here, I used small pieces of my giant rock fortress as ammo. They were small pieces, about the size of butcher knives, but I sharpened them to a fine point, and shot them out with extreme speed and accuracy. And this wasn't just one at a time either, I was shooting off maybe hundreds of makeshift daggers per second; making sure to use Geo-Genesis to replenish the broken off pieces of the island. If for some reason a demon did manage to land on my island, i'd give it half a thought, and the son of a bitch would get spike up the one place the sun doesn't shine. Hell, I didn't even have to move my arms to make most of this work. Aside from moving the vines, I was commanding my island to do all the fighting with my mind. Don't get me wrong, it took hella concentration, which didn't get any easier what with the demonic lightning trying to break through my new man cave. Hell, my fortress actually got wrecked about five times, forcing me to hack and slash for a few, while I made myself a new one. Still, with the occasional island hopping every month or so, sometimes less, I managed to kill…..probably well in the 400,000 number of demons.

By this time, Gaea had shut down four more portals, making the battle a lot more favored towards me. For starters, I could now use the G-Force; just a kinda distilled, less powerful version. Still, that didn't stop me from f*(#!^% $#!+ up. I less than a second, I supercharged my fortress with enough G-Force to incinerate a small city, and let it explode. The rocks, all of which were sharpened to a tee, took out maybe a good thousand demons in one swoop; not to mention the countless others that were getting caught in the residual blast energy. In that moment, the battle odds tipped to my favor in an extreme way; and I was just getting started. I equipped my Titanic Avenger, the Triple Threat Combat Avatar fashioned after Hulk, Thor, and Captain America, and proceeded to f*(# some more $#!+ up.

Due to the still heavily corrupted G-Force, I couldn't make it 60ft tall, so I had to settle for 20ft; still powerful, but not unstoppable. To help me out, I used the remains of the exploded island, reshaped them into 20ft tall constructs of Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Thor, and gave them enough G-Force to last for a year. I had to keep them on task with my sheer willpower, but other than that, they fought pretty well. I fought like this for four months straight, not even breaking a sweat. With every month that went by, Gaea was closing more and more portals, and I was getting stronger. Hell, after two more months of fighting, I transformed my construct Avengers into missiles, and sent them flying off in whatever direction was thickly populated with demons. I was able to focus on more energy based attacks, and was pleased to say that I killed maybe 5,000 demons at once, using a super powerful Unibeam blast.

As the portal count dwindled to a lone one, I thought I was home free; but then came another surprise.

This one was fast; even I didn't have time to defend against it. Before I knew what was going on, I felt something launch into my chest, my actual chest, and rocket me out of my Titanic Avenger. The punch hurt a lot, and that's saying something, especially after all of the training I went through. The mystery monster planted me hard into a nearby island, and tried to continue the beatdown. This time though, my body called for a Timeout, and I was able to ID and counter my attacker. I'll say this: I just can't catch a break with the super powered ladies. This chick didn't look like anything special, just some girl with caramel skin, black hair, wearing a purple T-Shirt, black leggings, and a domino mask; but my God, what a beast! She was super toned, almost had as much muscle as I did. When she threw a punch at my face, I just barely caught it, even in Timeout, and that $#!+ still hurt my hand. I quickly blasted at her with a huge ray of G-Force from my eyes, and just barely managed to get her off of me. She came back strong, managing to get me with a hard right cross to the face, followed by a roundhouse to the side of my head. As if that wasn't enough to convince me that this girl was a bonafide badass, she blasted me with some kind of dark energy blast, launching me straight through a small mountain on the island we were fighting on. This was gonna be fun in all the wrong ways.

I felt her rocketing towards me again, but this time, I was having none of her at all. I recovered, dodged her flying punch, and turned up the gravity to X300. That may seem a little extreme, but trust me, she could totally take it. In fact, the extra G's only seemed to cut her speed down by a quarter; she was still in great shape for a fight. She tired blasting at me with a wave of some kind of black fire, but I quickly made a shield construct, and after blocking the fire, transformed it into a fist, and sent it barrelling into her. Thanks to the absurd amount of G's, my mystery woman didn't go flying off, which set me up just perfect to deliver her the ass whoopin' of a lifetime. Oh, and before you rag on me for hitting a girl….just don't. She could probably kick the crap out of an Avenger, so she was more than my equal.

Before we collided, I made a spire of rock come out of the ground, uppercutting her in the chin, and wrecking her flight pattern. Oh yeah, trust me, after more than five years of battle experience, your playbook expands from just the notion of "punch the bad guy super duper hard". Anyway, I activated my G-Blazer, owned her in the face with a reverse kick, and quickly planted her in the ground with a hammer punch. She recovered quickly, tried to lunge at me, but failed amazingly, as I moved to the side, grabbed her legs, and slammed her back to the ground. I was gonna land on top of her, and continue to beat the everliving $#!+ out of her, but she opened her mouth, and an honest to Jesus BLACK HOLE came out of it! Quick reminder for those of you that forgot….BLACK HOLES HAVE EXTREME GRAVITY! Hell, if I had actually been flying towards her, it would've been game over for me. As was such, it still wasn't a breeze getting away from the damn thing; and this is coming from the guy who could walk on Jupiter for an average mid-morning stroll. I hauled ass to get away from the black hole, my skin actually feeling like it was getting slowly ripped off of my bones. I was flying at like a zillion miles per hour, and it still felt like I was in the same place as I was; even worse, I was starting to wear down. There are some limits that are meant to be pushed, and some that I never want to find out about. Figuring out whether or not I could survive in a black hole without being ripped apart atom by atom? Not exactly on my workout list. While flying away from Black Hole Girl, official name, I used my earthbending powers to break off the small ledge of land she was lying down on; if I couldn't get away from her, i'd get her the hell away from me. As she started falling, and my body started to feel more free, I looked down, created a supercharged ball of G-Force, enough energy to level a battleship, and gave Black Hole Girl an early breakfast meal. To be honest, I didn't really expect it to do much, just a last second f*(# you to her, but something weird happened. Like I said, black holes were supposed to be these unstoppable forces of gravity, the kind of stuff that could digest stars, but as soon as my G-Bomb flew into it like a ski ball, going off with a big boom, Black Hole Girl did not respond accordingly. Her entire face went unfocused, and not just in a "HOLY $#!+ THIS HURTS" type of way. No, her entire face dispersed into unfocused black tendrils of energy, etched with small G-Force flares. She managed to put her face together again, coming at my life one more time, but she definitely seemed shaken. At least I think she did. I'm still not certain whether or not she was human.

She blasted at me with a wave of black fire, but I wrapped myself in a G-Force Iron Man construct, flew through it, and socked her hard in the head.

"Don't suppose you'd answer a few questions?" I asked her while...assaulting her.

"How about who the hell are you?" I blasted her with a Unibeam.

"What do you have to do with Tartarus?" I kicked her hard under her chin.

"Would you consider giving me your number?" I got her with a hard tiger knee to the chest.

While she wasn't answering any of my questions, I did get at least one useful tidbit of info out of it. Remember her black hole mouth? That whole swirling vortex of terror thing she had goin' on? Yeah, as it turned out, that wasn't gonna be much of a problem anymore. See, as we fought back and forth, I was winning, she occasionally opened her mouth every other time I got a hard hit or kick in. She didn't make any sounds, but I guess that was her way of expressing pain. Anyway, when she opened her mouth, the black hole was still there, but it was super small. Oh, right, you don't get it yet. The first time she made a black hole, the thing was about the size of a basketball backboard. Now, it was just the size of….however big people's mouths usually are. Oh, don't get me wrong, the gravity was still OP enough to rip a regular person's atoms apart, but for me, it was manageable. Still, I couldn't have that messing up my flow, so I decided to shut her up for good. Guys, I swear, I was not enjoying this. Anyway, after knocking her away, I found a piece of stray floating rock, grabbed it, and changed it into liquid Titanium. I ditched my Iron Man suit, wrapped the liquid metal around my hand, and charged after Black Hole Girl. Once getting close enough, I willed the liquid metal to jump off of me, cover her mouth, and harden into a solid state; no more black holes. She seemed a little pissed about me shutting her up, but that was understandable. Her rage quit tho? Jesus!

She made a wall of black fire swirl around her, which ironically enough, was not a heat source. She went to work, blasting at me left and right with the stuff, occasionally taking the time to create construct barrages, like skulls, dragon heads, and clawed hands. I was able to block, dodge, and counter most of her attacks, but a few occasionally made it through. They stung like the dickens, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Still, Black Hole Girl wasn't done yet. Still in her swirling blaze of terror, she rocketed into me way faster than I was ready for. As I was engulfed in the blaze, she continuously punched me left and right, actually getting off some pretty hard hitting blows. I fumbled around trying to block her hits, but I was in way too deep; the pain of the fire was almost too much. However, in a last attempt to get back in the fight, I activated my G-Blazer, and as the pain immediately subsided, I managed to grab one of Black Hole Girl's strikes, and headbutt her hard. She recoiled, but I was just getting started; and yeah, I was pissed!

I took the kiddie gloves off, and went all out. I know sometimes that's what I should do from the get go, but at this point holding back is just a force of habit. Besides, if I went all out all the time, i'd never learn control. Anyway, I decked her in the face with a hard right cross, and tapped into Blitz Extreme; didn't want her flying away too soon. I hit her in the throat with a leopard paw, released a flurry of punches to her midsection, and topped it off with a G-Force charged backflip kick, followed by a drop kick. Black Hole Girl probably didn't even have the time to register how much pain she was in, before she went careening into wherever, faster than a bullet. I raced after her, continuously punching her as hard as I could, each blow strong enough to level half a state. I noticed a small landmass in the distance, dime a dozen they were, and punched Black Hole Girl straight through it. From a distance, I multiplied the fragmented rocks, made them clamp around her arms and legs, and brought her back to the surface of the island. Next, I tried something extreme. While flying straight at her, I used my power to shrink down to the size of a pebble, and smashed on top of Black Hole Girl as hard as I could.

Ok. I don't usually get serious like this, but sometimes certain experiences make you grow up for a few seconds. Now I smashed into Black Hole Girl with just my base strength. No G-Force enhancement, just me the size of a pebble, hitting her as hard as I could. As soon as I made contact, the island shattered like breakaway glass. The impact of the explosion was so massive, I knew I had struck with the force of several atomic bombs. Hell, the reverberation just kept expanding across the Geo-Nexus. I knew I was in a kind of virtual reality, a place where I could've gone all out, without fear of hurting anyone, but that still didn't negate the fact that I had just struck with enough force to level Maine. That scared the $#!+ out of me, and I immediately promised myself i'd never use this out in the real world, unless it was for emergencies only; or at least until I figured out how to keep a cap on the maximum damage.

Anyway, sorry for that bring me down, just had to get that out there. I looked around to see if Black Hole Girl was still alive, but only saw a thick black cloud of smoke fly up to the one remaining portal to Tartarus. Now that I thought of it, time seemed to stop for my fight with her. Not literally, but there were no other demons coming out of the portal; not a one. Still the portal remained open. It fluctuated at times, but it looked like Gaea was having trouble with this one.

"_G?" _I asked her, after growing back to normal size. "_What's the deal up there?"_

"_GRAN-" _she said, her voice breaking up like bad cell phone reception. "_NOT-, WAY-, CHA-, TAR, TY- , FUSION, COMING!_

Did you understand any of that? No? Okay then, so i'm not crazy. Yeah, I have no idea what Gaea was talking about, but the fight obviously wasn't done yet.

Of course the universe would be swift on its delivery of my daily $$ f*(#!*&amp;.

The portal shook violently, and the demonic thunder amped up to a billion. What happened next went by in a blur; literally. I didn't get a clear image of what was coming, but I did see a streak of red and black fly down out of the portal, and make a sharp turn towards me. My body called for a Timeout, and I had maybe one tenth of a second to spare, as I side flipped over the black blade that would've struck me dead in my neck. I didn't even have a chance to recover, but my body called for another Timeout. This time, I barely had time to create a shield construct to block the oncoming blade. Still, the impact of the strike broke my shield, and sent me careening away. And yet, this thing just wouldn't stop! I felt the mystery thing swing its sword at me again. I managed to dodge it, and tap into Geo Blitz Extreme; obviously I was in for another equal fight. The guy, whoever he was, was big; like a lumberjack on steroids. He had long flowing hair, a thick beard, and dark black skin. His eyes were empty sockets filled with blood red fire, and he was wearing a black classic Greek armor set, with a gorgon head design engraved all the breastplate. He had a matching cape, and dark black, probably Scabrite, sword that just wouldn't quit. Still, the most interesting part about the guy was his legs. No, not because they were hot; although he could definitely scissor an anaconda to death. It was because snakes, actual black snakes, were coming out of his legs; almost like maggots. The snakes would always go back into other parts of his leg, and seemed to be made entirely of an inky/shadowy substance; somehow both solid and gaseous, weird word, at the same time. He had a evil, ancient, and eternal type of feel to him; except it was multiplied? I couldn't really explain it, but I felt multiple entities at work, like the accumulation of several malicious beings that have, and always will exist. I took all of that in, in half a second, before I came up with a hard uppercut; not even bothering to tone down the punch. I couldn't afford to. This guy was the real deal, and I was gonna give him the VIP treatment. The punch was strong enough to level several skyscrapers like they were houses of cards, shatter the glass of anything that was within a 30 mile radius, and hurl a tank into orbit. The dude I punched, might've flew back 10ft before stopping naturally, not even looking remotely injured.

He started to laugh, and I damn near pissed my pants. His voice was a mix of three dark, evil entities, all from the pits of my darkest nightmare. Seriously, i'm not afraid of much, although i'm developing a phobia to Adamantium, Vibranium, etc., but this guy was definitely making his way onto the list. His voices triggered all of my childish fears i've ever had. The fear of the dark, under the bed, the closest, the tractor; all of it came rushing back into my head. A cold feeling worked its way into my bones and almost froze them solid; I had to force myself not to lose my will to fight.

"_IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO, GAEA?!" _the evil guy shouted. "_A puny boy, is the best you can summon to stand against your doom?!"_

Nothing like some good old fashioned $#!+ talking to get your blood riled up, cuz I forgot all about being scared.

I blasted at him with a huge Geo-Wave; one that was strong enough to vaporize a city. Mystery dude was lost in the wave pretty good, but when I stopped to check on my progress, the dude wasn't fazed at all. I saw flickering dark purple energy sparking around him, so he obviously blocked the blast. Still, he was strong enough to shrug that off, with little to no effort; I was gonna hate seeing this guy go all out.

"_Humph," _he said casually. "_You are much stronger than Gaea's previous dog, i'll give you that much."_

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, dude!" I said, trying my damnedest to sound tough. "Speaking of which, just who the hell are you; I like to know the names of the people I stomp into the dirt!"

Good job, Grant. Great grandstanding.

Mystery dude laughed at me; hard. His body started to swirl with red, purple, and black energy. Damn, this guy was SO totally the real deal. His face morphed from the black skinned caveman, to a roaring red ball of red fire. I'm pretty sure a skull was in there somewhere, but the flames were overshadowing it by a mile and a half.

"_I BELIEVE MY BELOVED HAS ALREADY TOLD YOU OF ME!" _a deep bellowing voice roared out of the flame.

"Tartarus?" I managed to squeak out, my voice as pitiful as a sick mouse. "You're looking…flamboyant?"

"FLATTERY WILL NOT GRANT YOU MERCY, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS AS IDIOTIC AS THAT!"

Tartarus sounded like he wanted to rip me a new one, but his fiery face went all distorted, and dark inky fire took its place. The black fire solidified into dark tendrils, until it for me a face straight out of a horror movie. The thing looked like the Predator, made entirely of ink. His hair whipped around like snakes, and dark matter oozed off of him like sweat. From what I could see, this guy wasn't very serious minded, but he felt like more of a threat than Tartarus could every be.

"_Come now, Tartarus," _the new face chided his other face. "_How am I supposed to strike fear into the boy's heart, when you already have him on the brink of voiding his bowels in his trousers."_

His voice was somehow both forebodingly deep, and annoyingly raspy; still, it was enough to keep that grip of fear on my spine.

"_In any case," _the face continued. "_I am Amatsu-Mikaboshi, God of Evil, King of Chaos."_

"Amatsu Mishi boliski?" I tired to say, but ended up butchering the name. "Japanese god? You guys actually exist?"

Ink face didn't seem to like that comment. He roared at me, said something about eating my soul, but was quickly reigned in by the last, and ironically enough, base face; the one that looked like a charcoal soaked caveman.

"_Enough of this!" _He shouted, his voice sounding like a booming stereo being echoed through a canyon. "_I am Typhoon! Father of Monsters, Storm Giant, The Last Son of Gaea!"_

"Ugh," I responded. "Does that make you my step-brother? I disown you like so hard."

Typhoon didn't like that, and apparently, the other faces of him really wanted to get to the punchy kicky stuff. Demon King, yeah I refuse to alternate between all the names, summoned his sword, roared with his three in one demonic battle cry, and nearly stabbed me to death.

Yeah, one thing I gotta mention, as far as speed went, I had to keep it at 110% at all times. Demon King only lunged at me once, ONCE, and almost ran me through with no effort. Luckily, my body called for a Timeout, and I sidestepped, while managing to punch Demon King in the throat, and bat him away with a blast of G-Force. Again, this guy was tough as hell. I only repelled him a good 15 feet before he came at me again; although I made sure to go into Geo Blitz Extreme before he came back around. He slashed at me with his sword, and I dodged, rather than trying to make a weapon construct. First off, I missed my axe. The fact that I couldn't morph while in the Geo-Nexus, would be a big factor in this fight. Also, as I learned from my years of combat training, it's never EVER a good idea to fight your enemy in any aspect where they're comfortable. In other words, I was gonna get this guy to fight on my terms, not the other way around. Anyway, I dodged his first strike, blocked the next with a shield construct, and made the construct explode in Demon King's face. The explosion maybe knocked him back two feet, but it was only meant to be a distraction. I quickly wound my fist up, charged it with an ungodly amount of G-Force, and slammed it into Demon King's face. Oh, and just so we're clear, I was always at 110% with everything I threw at this guy. Even though it felt like I had just punched a mountain made of Titanium, I was proud to say that I had launched Demon King away at terminal velocity. I quickly flew after him, activating my G-Blazer, making sure to send extra juice to my arms and legs. I'll hand it to Demon King, the guy made me earn every inch. The plan, after knocking him into next week, was to keep up the punches, juggle him around a bit, and make him frustrated enough to ditch his sword for good. Instead, I managed to hit him maybe two more times, before he managed to recover, use my own momentum against me, and nearly take my head off with a wide swing. Hell, the only reason I didn't die was because I just barely ducked my head, and barreled into his breastplate with a flying headbutt; and even that $#!+ almost cost me my ass. First off, running straight into dark hellish metal is only good for two things: getting headaches, and pissing off the wearer. Demon King pounded me in the back with a single hammer punch, launching me downwards. Before I could even think of stopping myself, I felt some type of cable latch onto my back, and pull me up like I was attached to a bungee cord. The cord burned with energy, none of it feeling natural in any way, but that's beside the point. The cable yanked me up just as quick as Demon King pounded me down, and you better believe I went into Timeout faster than you could blink. Again, I just managed to scramble out of the way of Demon King's sword, hit him with a G-Force charged uppercut, and blast him away with an eye blast strong enough blow NYC away like sand hitting a fan. Whether or not it was actually hurting him, I dunno. As long as I was back in the fight, that was all that mattered.

For a good hour or so, I played a dangerous game of tag with Demon King. Every time I managed to outmaneuver him, and build up some momentum, i'd go right back to punching him super, duper, ultra, mega, hard; occasionally using G-Force blasts, and constructs to extend my combo. Still, Demon King was a f*(#!^&amp; beast. No matter how hard, or how many times I decked him, the dude always found a way to recover, and bite back. Don't get me wrong, I would put the mad juking skills on full blast, and more often than not, i'd manage to avoid all of his blasts, and swings; but when they connected, boy did they connect! Hell, forget Goblin, Juggernaut, and even Magneto, when this guy decked me in the gut, I actually coughed up blood! That. Should. Not. Happen. Don't worry, I managed to work through the pain, get out of the way of his weird magic mouth blast, and get the pain train rolling again. Oh yeah, another thing about Demon King: his power set was all over the place. For starters, and I noticed this when we occasionally got into a blast wave power battle, his energy signature was a three for one deal. Every blast was a fusion of Amatsu's blackish grey fire, Tartarus' red flame, and Typhoon's ugly face. Demon King rarely used constructs to oppose mine's but when he did, I could tell that was Amatsu in action; especially when huge ink-like spider arms shot out of his back, like he was Ares from the GOW games. Still, I managed to keep up a good hit ratio, even getting in some pretty solid combos in on Demon King; but when I f*(# % up, boy did I f*(# up.

I happened after I got a pretty long combo off on Demon King, about 50 direct punches to the chest, sides, and throat. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not "long" compared to my other fights, but believe me when I say getting five hits off on this guy was an achievement, let alone 50. Anyway, Demon King managed to block one of my cross punches, but I blocked his counter punch to my side, and gave him a hard sock to the face. That threw him off-balance for a bit, and I assaulted him with a barrage of G-Force charged punches and kicks, until the guy managed to stop me dead in my tracks. He caught one of my wide swings in his arm, and instead of giving me a hard chop to the wherever, my arm started to get stuck in Amatsu's inky webbing. Before I could try getting out of it, Demon King grabbed my other arm, and the entire process start on that end too. I tired struggling out of it, even activating my G-Blazer, in the vain hope that the good worked the way Venom's did, but that hope was immediately dashed. Suddenly, just as the goo enveloped me from the neck down, a tingling sensation spread over my whole body. It felt ticklish, but I could tell it wasn't supposed to; Demon King actually looked kinda confused. Maybe I accidentally laughed at him, smiled, or gave off the impression that I was just unimpressed with his power, cuz Demon King cranked the dials up to 11. He opened his mouth, and a black, red,and purple bonfire erupted from his mouth, bathing me thoroughly in the inferno. Again, I had to keep myself from laughing, because this was almost like a joke. I could tell that the fire was supposed to be burning the $#!+ out of me, but it honestly felt like a gentle warm breeze. Still, I was kinda done with being this guy's fireplace; it was time to rip this dude a new one. I pretended to be in agony, screaming and writhing slightly to keep up the illusion. Behind the scenes though, I was building up a massive amount of G-Force, prepping for the mother of all explosive waves. Thanks to Gaea's intense training, I could use 10% of the G-Force without hurting myself, and Demon King was about to feel the full explosive force of that. Hell, he didn't even have to go through the long wait that usually comes with it. Maybe it was all that chi training, or I was just starting to get the hang of it, but flowing G-Force through my body came a lot easier now. Anyway, you get the gist. In the blink of an eye, the fight went from Demon King reveling in his delusional advantage, to me blasting him away with the force of a nuke. Despite the fact that I had just expelled enough energy to destroy a good chunk of Texas, I had to admit how much I enjoyed that. It was like every cell in my body had exploded, like someone had shot me up with enough adrenaline to keep me running forever. Still, I did not account for Demon King's recovery time. Quicker than even my body could call for a Timeout, I felt him sock me hard in the face, rattling my skull, sending me shooting backwards at like Mach 3.

Yeah. That one hurt. Oh my God, that one hurt! Seriously, my vision went yellow and white for a second there. I felt another punch find it's way to my chest, followed by another to the head, and a blast of fire point blank to my back. I tried to recover, to get back in the fight, but Demon King kept me off-balance in every way possible. Hell, I remember getting struck in the back with a bolt of demonic lightning, and that was not something I liked. I quickly put a barrier around myself. It was hastily made, and shoddy at best, but when Demon King came around for another punch, it held it's own. I immediately activated my G-Blazer, overpowered it with even more G-Force, and went back to the punching, kicking, and hair pulling. Demon King and I went at it FURIOUSLY. Every second we were exchanging at least 500 punches and kicks, with a good handful of blasts and constructs to mix it up. I'll give Dirt Momma props where props are due; she had some mad crazy preparation skills. Seriously, I can't even count the amount of times Demon King would've killed me, if I didn't go through the training I did. He was just a little faster, a good bit stronger, and a hell of a lot tougher; but he couldn't fight for $#!+. Oh, he got a few good hits on me, and I wasn't strong enough to block all of his hits, but overall, my years of martial arts training gave me the slight edge. I got him good with some pretty satisfying hits and kicks, every blow going off like a sonic boom. Demon King managed to get me off of him with a counter explosive wave, and even though it didn't hurt all that much, the flying punch he gave me afterwards hurt in full.

I rocketed back maybe three miles, but luckily, crashed through an island, shattering it into fragments, to break my fall. Crashing into the island didn't hurt too bad, but it was definitely one of those "walk it off" types of pain. As soon as I felt myself stop, I immediately tapped into Geo Blitz Extreme, just managing to stay ahead of Demon King's attack, and got him hard with a reverse kick to the chest, followed by a G-Force charged backflip kick. With every blow, the broken island got even more broken; at this point it was just a collection of above average boulders floating around. Demon King tried hitting me with a blastwave, but I created a vase construct around him, and held it together as tight as I could; essentially making his blast backfire in on itself. After activating my G-Blazer again, I charged Demon King another time, and the battle resumed. As I was fighting him, like super hardcore, DBZ on steroids fighting, I noted two things. First off: I missed my axe! I know I keep bringing that up. Yes, I know that's kind of a small thing, especially now that I had G-Force access, but my axe gave me more versatility; plus it was a lot stronger. I say this because as I was fighting Demon King, I changed the matter of the floating rocks around me into liquid Titanium. I had to condense it, to make it usable with my hands, but let's just say it wasn't exactly the solution to my problem. Demon King's sword was unbearably OP, the damn thing sliced through my makeshift sword and axe constructs like butter. I was always able to recycle the dismembered metal, but I had to pump it with a $#!+ ton of G-Force to give it even half a chance of surviving more than three direct strikes. If I had my axe, I wouldn't have to worry about that; Adamantium and Vibranium hold up real well. Second thing: I really missed my team. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't afraid of Demon King, or at least not terrified of him, but almost every time I had to fight without my friends it ended in disaster. Venom. Goblin. The first training session. I knew that I was alone, or at least as alone as you can be with Mother Earth, I knew I had to rely on my own strength, skills, and power; but I knew i'd be 1,000 times more secure if Storm-Lord and Sunbird had my back. Anyway, as I continued my brawl with Demon King, Gaea finally got back in contact with me.

"_GRANT!" _her voice slammed into my head, almost panting for breath. "_HOW DO YOU FARE?!_

"_WHOA!" _I thought back to her, just managing to dodge one of Demon King's swings. "_DON'T DO THAT! I CAN'T FIGHT, AND DEAL WITH YOUR YELLING! But i'm fine, thanks for asking. Oh, and WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?! NAPPING?!"_

"_Not funny. My consciousness was temporarily trapped in Tartarus, the physical place. I had to fight my way back to the Geo-Nexus; Tartarus has had a lot of time to plan this assault."_

"_No $#!+. Speaking of your evil ex-boyfriend, and his other friends-"_

"_Do not underestimate them, Grant! That's not just Tartarus you fight against-"_

"_Yeah, yeah. Your evil son, Typhoon, total tool by the way, and Amatsu something Japanese I can't pronounce. Really bad dudes, really strong fusion. Trust me, G, I know that first hand. But how do I get rid of them? Also, what's up with that portal not closing?"_

Oh yeah, Ms. Dirt Queen didn't fulfill her part of the bargain. Sure, there weren't any demons raining from the skies, but that portal was still wide open. Made me uncomfortable and what not.

"_Ah yes," _she started, as I quite literally crushed Demon King in between two G-Force charged islands. "_You see, about that…"_

"_Gaea!" _I almost growled at her. "_If the next words are anywhere close to "what had happened was", i'm gonna….well, just don't say that! But seriously, what are we dealing with here?"_

"_The portal is connected to Tartarus, Amatsu-Mishabolski, and Typhoon-"_

"_Call it Demon King."_

"_Why?"_

"_Cuz it's easier to say, and I came up with the name, so that makes it badass."_

"_I despise your inherent nature to name everything with absurd aliases."_

"_Too bad, it's part of the package."_

"_So be it. The portal is connected to Demon King, and the only way it closes is if you defeat him."_

"_So, just punch him till' he doesn't get up? That might take a lot longer than you think, but I think I can do it."_

"_It is not that simple, Grant. This form isn't something you can hit hard enough. To put him out of commission, you have to disrupt the fusion, make it implode in on itself."_

"_And how exactly do I do that? You didn't exactly give me a tutorial for this."_

"_As of now….the only thing you can do is keep fighting. I sense a latent energy buildup inside of Demon King. If I can find a way to use that against him, we can take him down; hopefully for another good 5,000 years."_

"_You're making this up as you go, aren't you?"_

"_I could say the same thing about you, boy. Just keep fighting, I'll be in touch."_

So that's what I did.

I lost count of how long I fought Demon King. Maybe five months, probably more. But I did remember the hell I paid for every second. We flew around like bullets, always going at it relentlessly, never getting the upperhand on each other for too long. I pulled my best tricks out of my sleeve for him. For starters, with every island we crumpled, a lot, I transmuted the rocks into a different type of metal, and added it to my liquid metal mix. Hell, at a certain point, I forgot how many metals I didn't have in the mix. I mean, I already had Titanium, Gold, Platinum, Steel, Copper, Magnesium, Aluminum, Copper, Nickel, Zinc, and pretty much everything else you can imagine. The thing weighed about 100,000 tons since it was basically compressed mass, and I still had to put some G-Force in it to make it sturdy, but after all the work I put into it, it was starting to hold up real well. As me and Demon King continued our fight, not only did I school him in swordplay, but I ripped him a new one with my ever changing liquid metal. For example, one time, after I managed to cut his hands off with some twin daggers, he healed fast, I reshaped the metal around my fists, and gave Demon King a wombo combo for the ages. After knocking him away with a quick blast of G-Force, I rearranged the metal again, and quite literally rammed a silver/gold battleship into him; oh yeah, this liquid metal stuff was dope! That's not to count out Demon King, that guy definitely didn't give an inch. When we weren't locked in hand-to-hand, sword, and construct battles, Demon King was saturating the air with atomic bomb level blasts. Seriously, every blast he hurled at me was more than enough to level Hawaii ten times over. I managed to dodge, block, and counter a good bit of his attacks, but i'd be lying if I said I didn't eat more than my fair share of demon fire. The good news, and I found this out after I took three direct shots to the chest, his attacks were obviously magical. The blasts didn't exactly bounce off of me, they definitely hurt like hell, but after taking a quick glance at my arms, I noticed how the fire seemed to be burning over me, like I had a barrier just over my skin. I realized this was my magical immunity working in over time, and I couldn't be more grateful to have it. I quickly got back in the fight, wrapped myself in some Triple Threat Armor, and went all out some more. Demon King tried to keep nuking me, but not only did my armor hold up against him, I was able to get more creative with my attacks. I reshaped the armor around my right arm into a spiked club, and whacked Demon King across the face. I changed it again, this time into a hammer, and bashed him away. Then I summoned my All-Metal, official name, changed it into a spear hook, launched it into Demon King's chest, brought him back Scorpion style, and gave him an uppercut so hard, his face went all distorted in fire and darkness. I kept up my attack, only now feeling like I had a chance to actually win.

"_Excellent, Grant!" _Gaea cheered. "_Keep it up, you are doing amazing!"_

"_F*(# off!" _I responded, kinda miffed that she was contributing zero effort to the battle. "_Where the hell are you in this fight?"_

"_Grant! You are so rude and unappreciative! Is that any way to thank me for bottlenecking the portal?"_

"_What?"_

I stole a quick glance to the portal; it was in my general direction, so it wasn't too much of a distraction. The portal was still big and portaly, but huge bolts of G-Force were crossing the portal entrance like magical barbwire. My enhanced vision and hearing kicked in, and I saw a huge horde of black demons and monsters trying to get through. They burned into ash within three seconds of contact with the barrier, and I could see literally thousands of them trying to get through the portal. Damn. She actually WAS helping.

"_You were saying?" _Gaea taunted

"_Ok, ok," _I said, as I fought with Demon King again. "_You've been doing more than your fair share, i'm sorry. But plan "punch the bad dude a lot of times", is not working."_

"_One day. One day, i'll teach you to see with more than just your natural senses, boy. Until then, you are going to have to trust me. Demon King's overuse of his power is taking a toll on his form."_

"_Which means?"_

"_Do you have any idea how much strength and magic it takes to keep those three entities together? Every second together is like trying to force three like magnetic ends together. As such, their collective chi-"_

"_That thing has chi?!"_

"_Everyone does, Grant. It's a natural life force; hell, all I am is a big expanse of living chi. Anyway, their collective chi points are being overloaded, making it harder for them to stay together. That face shattering punch you delivered a while back, that wasn't just a lucky shot. Demon King is weakening."_

"_So, just punch him till he burns out?"_

"_Not exactly that simple. If Demon King is defeated, that is to say, if he is allowed to lose his overall form in an explosive wave, while in the Geo-Nexus, the rolling darkness will pollute my consciousness beyond repair; it will be the end of me, and a very long sleep for him._

"_So, let's just launch him back into the portal, shut the door, and call it a night."_

"_Again! Not! That! Simple! His consciousness is tied to the portal, in order to make it unstable enough for me to close it, he needs to be defeated!"_

"_But if I defeat him, he'll blow his load all over you."_

"_That is a crude, but very accurate way of describing it."_

"_Ok….so you said his chi points were reaching max, right?"_

"_Affirmative."_

"_Then let's make em' overload. I know I can't see them, but you can. Together we can wreck this guy."_

"_And what of the fallout?"_

"_We'll send him back to wherever; let him blow up there."_

"_Even if we could, the amount of damage Demon King has to take is astronomical, even for you. There is no way this can be done quickly, and keeping this portal under control is getting harder by the second."_

"_Don't suppose you'd know any way to speed the process up?"_

"_I could possess you."_

Ok. This is the part where my brain shuts down, and I lose all sense of disbelief. The shock factor was so real, I actually ate one of Demon King's fists, the punch shattering the first layer of my Triple Threat armor.

"_Gaea?" _I cautiously thought to her,while making my tree armor sprout G-Force charged thorns, before paying Demon King back for that shot to the face.. "_Please tell me 'posses' means something different to your seriously messed up brain?"_

"_I do not have a brain," _she responded matter-of-factly. "_And do not fear, I will not COMPLETELY inhabit your body; you could not handle all of me anyway."_

"_I'll tell you like I told my last hook up, I am not down for pegging."_

"_You unbearable, insufferable, immature…..just shut up and listen, Grant! I can put some of my overall consciousness inside of you, the same way I did when I gave you your new powers. The only difference is that I simply passed through you on the first time; to inhabit your body is a whole different story. Depending on how much of me you can take, which should be around the same level of G-Force you can safely use, your powers will increase exponentially, but the after effects will wreck your body."_

"_So, a Kao-Kein?"_

"_Basically."_

"_Ok, then that just leaves the whole blowing him up thing to worry about, and don't worry about that, I have a plan."_

"_Grant?" _

"_Just trust me, G, I know what i'm doing, I won't let you get all corrupted."_

Gaea seemed a little hesitant to let me take the reins, but even she knew when I was being serious.

"_Fine," _she said. "_Do what you must, it will take me a little while before I can enter safely inside of you."_

"_Again," _I thought to her. "_Not down for-"_

"_Shut up, Grant."_

And on that polite note, she left me to my own devices.

Oh, and make no mistake, while that conversation was going on, I was locked in the most brutal fight i'd ever been in. Hell, if I actually added all of the "oofs", "umphs", and swear words into the conversation, i'd never finish one coherent sentence. Anyway, after another quick back and forth exchange of punches, kicks, and energy blasts, I managed to get the drop on Demon King; hard.

I wrapped the All-Metal around my fists, charged them with G-Force, and after getting inside his guard, punched him a good multiple hundred times, sent him rocketing into another nearby island, caught up with him, and pinned him to the ground. We wrestled around for a little bit, which was awkward as f*(#, before Demon King blasted me off of him, and tackled me in the gut. We flew around the air for a bit, fighting awkwardly, as I tried punching him in the back to get him off of me. It took a few good shots, but I eventually managed to bat him away, and launch him back onto the island. We fought around for a good minute or so, before Demon King started monologuing and…..just take a look.

"IMPRESSIVE!" he roared at me, while we slugged it out. "GAEA SEEMS TO HAVE FOUND HERSELF A STRONGER DOG FOR ME TO SLAUGHTER!"

His weird three in one voice sent chills down my back; still couldn't get over it.

"YOUR BLOOD WILL SATISFY MY HUNGER FOR MILLENNIA TO COME!" he roared, as he changed his arms into blades. "YOUR DEATH WILL BRING IN A ETERNAL ERA OF DARKNESS FOR THE EARTH!"

Damn! I wanted to talk some smack back to him. Maybe rag on his breath, his stupid shadow powers, or the fact that it took three of him to take on one of me. But at this point, my life's goal was to keep my life. Seriously, Demon King was starting to bring it. His speed increased by….a lot. He was starting to get more hits in, although his magic fire was still useless as ever. I kept him on as tight a leash as I could. I used a $#!+ ton of G-Force to keep the rock we were standing on intact, upped the gravity by 100, and used my nature powers to summon a barrage of tree made beasts to help me keep him under control. Still, he was either really, really confident of his victory odds, or really desperate to put me away before he tired out. After a quick intense battle, we ended up grappling again, which is a really odd thing to do in general, and Demon King started to talk more $#!+.

"_Tiring boy?" _He asked me. "_Why not just give in? You know you cannot defeat me, you know you cannot succeed in your quest. Cease to fight, and I will make your voyage to the afterlife a swift one."_

I was really, really, really, tired of bad guys offering to kill me nicely!

"As good of an offer as that it is," I responded through gritted teeth. "Size matters!"

On a positive note, that comeback was so stupid, even an overlord of evil gave me a WTF face. Before he could retaliate though, I shrunk to the size of a pebble, absorbed all of the G-Force I put into the island, which took less than half a second, and with all of my might, gave Demon King a huge jumping uppercut.

Yeah, remember how the last time I did this, I probably struck hard enough to make a handful of atomic bombs look like firecrackers? Well, now that I had just used my full force, plus a considerable amount of G-Force into this one…...well…...let's just say I probably could've leveled the entire east coast with that last blow. Demon King was launched so high into the air, if this was the outside world, he'd already be in orbit. I quickly turned on the jets, caught up to him, and hit him with another string of super fast, super mega atomic punches and kicks. Demon King was just having a bad time of it. Within three punches, his breastplate was shattered, and his form was getting more and more unstable; there were times when I could practically see Amatsu and Tartarus in between all the smoke and distorted energy. He tried fighting back a few times, swatting at the air wildly, roaring curses at me fluently. Yeah...let's just say that tactic was not effective in any way. Hell, after punching him so many times, really should've started out with this bit, I had to change sizes, by about 60ft, and resort to smashing my fist into Demon King, decking him into another landmass. I completely decimated the island, but I used my Geo-Genesis to create two skyscraper sized rocks, charge them with G-Force, and smash Demon King between them. Oh yeah, quick fact, I can still manipulate G-Force when i'm big/small; but when i'm big, my control over it basically multiplies by ten. Anyway, Demon King sputtered out with a small wisp, and then exploded into pure darkness. This wasn't just a small cloud of smoke mind you, it was a thick fog of dark, fiery, ink. It quickly enveloped me, and I had to haul ass to fly out of there.

I maybe had about three seconds to shake off the weird vibe that fog gave me, before my body called for a Timeout like so hard. I turned around fast, and damn near $#!+ myself. Demon King, was a freaking giant serpent. No, I mean that. I giant black serpent, who somehow had the ability to spew flames from its mouth, I could see them forming, was half a second away from chomping down on me. I never liked the movie all that much, but the sight of Demon King this way, gave me flashbacks of Dragon Wars. Anyway, I quickly flew up, just barely avoiding being a midnight snack, if it even was midnight. I made my All-Metal increase to my size, changed it into a spear, and lodged it deep in the serpent's head, summoning an explosive bolt of G-Force for good measure. The bolt wasn't as effective as I would've liked it to be, but at least it made the son of a bitch shriek in pain. He writhed and thrashed, spewed fire everywhere, and while I was eventually thrown off, I made sure to summon a few more G-Force bolts on top of him. He tried snapping me up again, but I blasted a huge wave of G-Force into his mouth, getting him off my ass, so that I could fly like hell.

I spent the next few minutes dodging the serpent's blasts of fire, creating giant hammer constructs to swipe him across the face, and just generally trying to get my act together. After nearly getting barbecued twice, having to pry myself out of the serpent's jaws, and a stream of cuss words later, I got an idea. I summoned my Triple Threat armor, made it grow, and changed it into the form of a giant medieval dragon; thanks Dragon Empress. Demon King looked a bit surprised, but he quickly got over it, and resumed attacking me savagely.

Another quick fact, controlling a dragon made of rock, tree, and earth energy is not all fun and games. No, it wasn't exactly hard, just extremely different. Plus, I was used to controlling things that had were humanoid; controlling beasts was a completely different story. It was weird, clunky, and took way more concentration than I usually had to put into anything. Naturally, I got my ass handed to me on the first few minutes of the fight. Demon King's snake form decimated my dragon with vice grips, flames, and pretty intense bites; had to deconstruct and reform the whole thing altogether. On the rebound though, I got my groove on. I remembered that controlling the rocks, bark, and energy, was more about fast thinking; in other words, I had to think as fast as Demon King moved. I got back in the fight, clawing and bellowing fire at the serpent. Demon King was fast, definitely faster than I could move my dragon, but anytime I felt trapped, i'd rearrange the form of my dragon, and now Demon King was fighting a giant cobra. When my cobra started to overwhelm the serpent, Demon King changed into a giant bear; in retaliation, I transformed my armor into a giant lion. It went like that for a good while, Demon King and I going through the entire damn animal kingdom, trying to get a definitive advantage over each other. I got a few good swipes in with my lion form, pulled the rug out from under him with a rhio charge, and even pelted him in the face with an armadillo roll attack. Still, even though I adapted pretty well against Demon King's attacks…...all it took was one focused, point blank blast to the face, and my armor was history. I tumbled backwards, trying desperately to get my balance back, but ended up getting smacked around for my troubles. Demon King apparently was done with the whole animal fighting, and wanted to make things personal again. He decked me a good hundred times, threw in some fire, lightning, and slashed at me with his dark talons. Hell, the bigger question here was how my clothes weren't in tatters; probably made of unstable molecules or something.

Oh, and when I did get back in the fight, it was not exactly a graceful comeback. After getting blasted for like the trillionth time, I managed to spin around, getting in a midair crouching position, and I kid you not, Demon King's sword was barely an inch away from my chest. I've never jumped into Geo Blitz Extreme so fast, and you better believe I wrapped the All-Metal around my chest, charged it with a $#!+ ton of G-Force, and braced for the impact. Thank God, Gaea, the gods, and the freaking dirt, cuz the armor held up like a champ. I immediately blasted him in the face with a wave of G-Force from my eyes, grabbed his sword, yanked it from him, and stabbed him in the gut with it. I hoped that would do it, but I will never forget the lesson I learned my fight with Goblin: some people don't die from getting shanked. In response to that, I punched him hard in the chest, and continued to fight.

"_Alright, Grant," _Gaea finally said, after Demon King and I slugged it out for a few minutes. "_I'm ready for you, and do not give me any of your idiotic sexual jokes, they do not amuse me."_

"_Damn!" _I thought back to her. "_I had a good one ready. Speaking of which, why does it take you so long to prepare? What do you have to do to get ready for me?"_

"_Adjust my consciousness to fit the amount of G-Force your body can handle, asses your chi, and how I can integrate myself into it without killing you, account for brainwave activity, and make sure I don't accidentally erode every organ in your body; believe it or not Grant, that actually takes preparation time."_

"_Good stuff, so how do you want me to take you?"_

"_From above."_

I had no idea what that meant, until I heard a distant rumbling, followed by a BOOM! loud enough to shatter a million eardrums.

Demon King also seemed confused by the sudden burst of if thunder, so I took advantage of it, and punched him hard in the face, sending him sprawling away. At that moment, a bright flash of green fire/lightning, which was in the familiar shape of a woman, came down at like a…..damn, i'm all outta comparisons; never realized how many times the word lightning gets thrown around. Anyway, on a complete reflex, I changed the All-Metal into a sword, raised it, and took about 10% of Gaea. I thought it was gonna be just another slightly exhilarating boost of energy, but even a tankard of Monster laced with crack couldn't compare to this high! Every cell in my body, literally every cell, was filled with enough energy to tear through a tank. My strength and speed was off the charts, I felt like I could pick up a mountain as if it was a golf ball, run/fly around the earth in a second, and one shot Juggernaut; in other words, I was so f*(#!^$ ready!

I heard, saw, and felt Demon King fly back towards me. That was another thing about Gaea possessing me, my senses were enhanced beyond belief. I could probably see the Asteroid Belt from earth, and hear the roar of the sun. Oh, and while in here, the G-Force, I was pretty much God, or at least half of God. Wait, would that make me Jesus? Maybe an angel? Ah whatever, back to the fight stuff. Anyway, Demon King flew back to fight me, but came to a complete halt once getting within half a yard of me. Somehow, I got the feeling he could sense Gaea inside of me.

"_Heh," _he almost casually remarked. "_You are just full of surprises, aren't you Gaea? I suppose a bit of credit goes to the strength of your lackey, but still, you never disappoint."_

I opened my mouth, ready to cuss Demon King out, but something weird happened.

"_YOU VILE, DISGUSTING, ABOMINATION, SPECK OF SHADOW FILTH!" _my lips moved, but Gaea's voice came out. "_I HAVE DREAMED OF THIS MOMENT SINCE THE DAY YOU SLAYED DAMON; I WILL HAVE RETRIBUTION!"_

I could feel the hate resonate through my body, millennia of it just building and festering without end. To say that I didn't like it, would be an understatement. I didn't know it was possible to hate so much for so long. I felt it eat away at my insides, poisoning my emotions, and I was helpless to control it; Gaea was taking the wheel on this one.

"_Do not be so dramatic, my beloved," _Demon King responded, Tartarus' voice coming more to the surface. "_I am the incarnation of evil, despair, and pain. It is in my nature to destroy, just as treachery is in yours."_

"_You know nothing, I have-"_

"_Changed? Evolved? Revised your habits? Gaea, you are the same woman who killed your husband, just to put your even worse children in charge of the earth. The same woman who overthrew said children, to give way for an even worse pantheon to take control; and even then, you laid with me in a vain attempt to overthrow your mistake. Even now you use this boy as a tool for your 'righteous' vengeance. Did you give him a choice in the matter, did you-"_

"_SHUT UP!" _I, and I do mean I, shouted.

I simply couldn't take it anymore. Gaea's hate was overflowing inside of me, I was shaking with rage for some immortal douchebag that I didn't give two $#!+$ about. I had to end this fight soon, not just for the sake of the world, although that was super important, but so I didn't lose my sanity.

"Yeah, she's a piece of work," I admitted to Demon King. "Hell, her 'gift' was more of a threat than an offer. But she's still not as much of an immortal pain in my ass as you. I'm really tired of this, I just wanna kick your head off your shoulders, get Gaea out of me, and get back to the world above. So let's cut the $#!+, and resume killing each other!"

Oh, and just in case he might've misunderstood me, I rushed him, hit him in the gut with stiff jab, knocked his head with a left uppercut, and blasted him away with a wave of G-Force so strong, I immediately knew that it wasn't all me contributing to that blast.

"_So," _Gaea said, as I pursued Demon King. "_You think i'm a piece of work?"_

"_That's and understatement," _I responded. "_You're like the accumulation of every bad thing in every girl i've been with."_

"_Well, it's not like you were a saint either, Grant."_

That response was so jarring, so precisely on point with spite and disapproval, I knew that she knew every bad thing I did to every last girl i've either dated, flirted with, cheated on, or banged. First came shock, then sadness, then anger; all of it finding its way to Demon King's face with explosive rage.

"_What do you know about anything?!" _I asked her, my mind swimming with rage.

"_Melissa," _she started. "_Carmen, Betty, Adrian, Kara. All the best of friends, till you and your raging hormones caused them to fight over you in a cafeteria brawl. They haven't spoken to each other since."_

"_That was a different me, unlike you, I actually have changed."_

"_That you, the one you claim to be different from, existed barely a month ago. And even then, why did it take Lindsey's-"_

"NO!" I screamed aloud, actually putting my fist through Demon King with that last one.

That was something I wanted to bury, and run away from. I would not let Gaea bring that one back to the surface.

"_YOU DON'T GET TO DO THAT TO ME, NOT EVER!"_

"_THEN DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ASSAULTING ME, JUST FOCUS ON SAVING THE WORLD, HERO!"_

In case you're a little confused, just know that Gaea and I were probably always destined to have a love/hate relationship. Anyway, I was probably better off this way, cuz I was hopped up on so much rage, all of it focused on Demon King, that there was literally no way he could even have a chance of walking away from this in one piece. However, just because I was giving it 112%, didn't mean that the fight would be a one hit knockout. Demon King came back explosively, his body completely engulfed in purple, black, and red flames. He came at me with a powerful wide swing, and even though I blocked it, the force echoing from it was enough to cause tidal waves. I blocked another one of his wide swings, kneed him in the chest, grabbed him by his throat, and rocketed him forward. I used my Geo-Genesis powers to create walls of rock for him to slam into as we flew. Dunno why, but it sure felt good. Demon King managed to pound me in the back once, but I got him back with a hard uppercut, grabbed his legs, spun him around a bit, and threw him like five miles away. I tapped into Geo-Blitz Extreme, caught up to Demon King, and started a new kind of pain chain. I charged my fists with G-Force, hit him hard in the face, and then hit him hard in the everywhere else. I got a flying start, came back around, and hit him with a flying punch to the back. Oh, and just so you know, the shot I gave him to the face, was enough to eject him at the speed of sound, I was just faster than the speed at which his body could fly away. Basically, I crushed Demon King in between two sonic booms, causing God knows how much damage to his insides. I let Demon King fly forwards, but I quickly got ahead of him, and hit with a winding shot to the gut; again, my hand went through this mother f*(#&amp; . This time, when I ejected my hand from his stomach, I noticed that his form didn't patch up. It was trying to, but it looked more like a discount Venom trying to awkwardly wake up.

"_He's weakening!" _Gaea shouted in my head, her gleeful hatred electrifying my nerves. "_Keep up the assault, you're nearly there!"_

"_Don't gotta tell me twice!" _I responded.

I continued my fight against Demon King, and boy was it a slugfest. Even with his not so healing stomach, dude fought hard. He tried to keep me at bay with a barrage of magic fire, but I blocked it with a giant Triple Threat shield construct, and sent it slamming into him. I deconstructed the shield, wrapped it around myself, reconstructed in into a Triple Threat armor, and continued to beat the ever living $#!+ out of him. One of the best things about this fight, was that Demon King seemed to be unable to change his form. For example, after hitting him with a good wombo combo, Demon King managed to dodge my double smash kick, got me good in the face with a right cross punch. The punch barely even registered at a 3/10, and pretty much only cracked my face armor, but Demon King tried to stab me with his blade hand. Not only did I catch it, but as soon as I crushed it in my hands, it basically dissolved, and rushed back into his body. Hell, when Demon King tried to shape shift into some ungodly beast thing, I could see his three forms breaking apart, before he aborted the effort, and tried to come at me with brute force. I dodged his first swing, hit him with a backflip kick, and summoned my All-Metal. I changed it into a sword, charged it with G-Force, and stabbed Demon King in the chest with the sword. Now, I was expecting it irritate him, may be hurt him a little, but it was basically silver to a werewolf. Demon King started smoking, greenish black smoke to be precise. He started wailing, his form more unstable than a rabid squirrel, and you better believe he got away from my sword faster than Quicksilver. Oh yeah, he was hurting; he was hurting bad. I charged him with my sword, as Demon King stood his ground, summoning his own sword. He slashed at me with a wide swing, but I blocked it, hit him with a power kick to the chin, and sliced Demon King straight through the stomach with a spinning slash. His body started to smoke even more, and he deteriorated into a collection of blackish purple fire, with sporadic bursts of flames, and purple lightning, all held together in a rough outline of a man. He actually reminded me of Carnage. Again, he tried slashing me to bits, but I changed my sword to a shield, still charged with G-Force, and took his blow like it was nothing. Hell, even further, his blade actually shattered against my shield. Apparently, the sword was charged with energy, cuz when it snapped, it exploded, like missile barrage level of explosion. I'll admit, the boomage threw me for a loop, launched me back a good mile or so, but nothing serious. Now that I had a good second or two to myself, I tapped into Geo-Blitz Extreme to get a better look at my All-Metal. I mean, I knew the thing was durable, but it was never able to just shrug off a slash from Demon King.

Yeah, this thing had gotten a major upgrade. From just a visual standpoint, it was engraved with Greek, Norse, Chinese, Egyptian, and Roman inscriptions. The metal felt alive, like an extension of myself, and….Gaea?

"_Impressive," _Gaea mused.

"_No doubt," _I responded. "_But how?"_

"_When I merged with you, I entered through your sword; don't know why you raised it to catch me, are you that desperate to be like Thor?"_

"_Ignoring. But what's up with the runes, hieroglyphs, and Latin? Aren't you a Greek Goddess?"_

"_I swear, it's like words go in one ear and out the other with you! I am Gaea to the Greeks, Jord to the Norse, Terra to the Romans, and I am not all that different from Geb, of the Egyptians. In my purest form, I am all, belonging to no one religion or culture. The sword is a reflection of that. It's infused with the strength of multiple incarnations of myself."_

"_Oh….well that's cool."_

I heard Demon King's guttural roar, and saw him flying towards me in the distance. The guy definitely wasn't all there. Sure he had increased in mass X2, and was little more than a blob of energy, but the guy was definitely struggling to keep it all together; I could feel the Gaea's glee at the sight of his pain. Seriously, I was gonna be so glad when she got the hell out of me.

"_He looks terrible," _Gaea said. "_We should do him a favor, and put him out of his misery."_

"_On it," _I responded. "_Can I make my Titanic Avenger suit as big as that?"_

"_That's not even an interesting question."_

"_Good. Give me a sec."_

While striking him with more brute force was definitely an entertaining prospect, I actually had a long term plan in place. I used my Geo-Genesis powers, stretched them to max, creating a landmass about the size of Manhattan, pumped it with an insane amount of G-Force, and hurled it at Demon King. Just as you'd imagine, the boom was on and atomic level. As soon as it went off, I summoned my Titanic Avenger suit, which repaired nicely after the incident with the Black Hole Girl, and locked onto the huge chunks of rock shrapnel that were flying everywhere. I didn't get all of them, just a good handful. Still, I rearranged them into huge cannonballs, changed their atomic structure to gold, I like gold, and kept them floating in the air, absently charging with G-Force.

"_What exactly do you plan to do with those?" _Gaea asked me.

"_You'll see," _I responded. "_For now, how close am I to filling Demon King's chi points?"_

"_One more good tussle ought to do it."_

"_Cool, let's get back to work."_

I locked on to Demon King's energy signature, rocketed towards him, and started to put the heat on. I launched a volley of shoulder rockets at him, made of rock, bark, and G-Force, while using my hammer to summon a f*(# ton of G-Force bolts. Demon King took them all to the chest, flying back a little, and I closed in on him with a huge hammer swipe to the head. The blow was enough to shatter a mountain, and Demon King's head reacted the same way a slinky does when you stretch it too long. He came back around with a right hook, but my shield absorbed most of the impact, and I blasted him with a Unibeam cannon. The blast went through him, and disrupted his form even more, but now he was acting like a blood sucking tick; he was starting to grow. We fought for like…...a long time. Demon King was barely putting up a fight, although he definitely was giving it his all. While he couldn't refine his abilities anymore, he still hit me with waves upon waves of magical fire; I had to wrap my Titanic Avenger in a layer of G-Force, just to keep it from burning away. And when Demon King actually did manage to get a good swing in on me, he knocked away the barrier. Still, I hit him with relentless missiles and Unibeam blasts. I threw my hammer at him, smacked him around, and actually trapped him in a G-Force whirlwind, taking a page out of Jason's book, and ambushing the mother f*(#%^ with lightning/fire. Still, Demon King just kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. At a certain point I wasn't fighting a man shaped monster, rather than a bulging black and red cloud that roared back.

"_YOU THINK ME DEFEATED, GAEA?!" _Demon King roared, his voice more of a collection of three guys with a sore throat. "_YOU THINK YOU HAVE WON?! MY VERY PRESENCE CORRUPTS THIS PLACE! IF I AM UNDONE HERE, I WILL PERMEATE YOUR VERY CORE! IN THE END, I WILL WIN GAEA, I HAVE WAITED TOO LONG TO EVEN ENTERTAIN THE POSSIBILITY OF LOSING! SO GO AHEAD, CONTINUE TO FIGHT, I WILL RETURN, AND YOUR WORLD WILL BE MINE!"_

Gotta admit, dude had the evil monologue thing down pack. Even worse, he kinda had the firepower to back it up. Like I said, the guy was more or less a big looming cloud that looked like a piece of roadkill spread over a flat surface. While he was boasting, he was also sending down waves of fire and lightning at me; I had to hide under a barrier to plan my next move.

"_He is right you know," _Gaea helpfully inputted. "_If he overloads and combusts on his own power, he'll pollute me beyond repair."_

"_Gee," _I snapped at her. "_Never would've figured that out!"_

"_Oh hush, you were the one who said that you had a plan!"_

"_And I do! But I need to know how close he is to reaching his maximum!"_

My eyes went unfocused for a few seconds, seriously, everything went blurry, before suddenly refocusing."

"_See for yourself," _Gaea plainly said.

I looked up at Demon King, and yup, this would do fine. Instead of looking at just a big blob of red and black, Demon King had lines going through his entire structure, almost like veins. I could see the energy pulsating through them, and I could see four big balls of….electricity? Fire? Wind? Plasma? All of the above? Yeah….it was really f*(#!^$ weird. Anyway, I could see five of these points were Demon King's head, shoulders, chest and kneecaps were; or at least by process of mapping. On the very edge of those whatever balls, like around there circumferences, was a type of shadowy barrier. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed….or maybe I am, I can recite the entire damn periodic table in detail by heart. Anyway, I put two and two together, and guessed that those were his breaking points; and they were dangerously close to the edge of bursting.

"_So what do you call this, G?" _I asked Gaea. "_Spirit Vision?"_

"_For a dumbed down version?" _she responded. "_That will suffice."_

"_Cool. Now lemme ask you something, is it possible to set off explosions, multiple, really big explosions, while wrapping those explosions in energy vacuums?"_

"_And energy singularity? I do not even think that is possible. What exactly are you planning?"_

"_After busting outta this shield, i'm gonna go all beast mode on that oversized smog cloud, and after bringing his whatever the f*(# those energy balls are, to the brink, I'm gonna use these gold balls i've been storing G-Force in, launch them into his energy buildups, and nuke him…..five times over."_

Guys, I just want you to know, a goddess screaming into your head is not fun; it's not fun at all.

"_ARE YOU MENTALLY INCOMPETENT ON EVERY LEVEL?!" _she roared into every corner of my poor head. "_NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS IMBALANCE MY ENERGY, I WILL BE QUEASY FOR WEEKS! ALSO, BECAUSE IT IS OBVIOUS FOR ALL OF YOUR HEARING CAPABILITIES, YOU STILL CANNOT COMPREHEND THE MEANING OF WORDS, IF HE IS UNDONE HERE, I WILL BE INDEFINITELY POISONED!"_

"_Okaaaay," _I softly responded back to her. "_First off, I got all of that. Second, I WASN'T DONE, LET ME FINISH, WILL YA?! If I can use that energy vacuum like you suggested, I can keep the explosions compacted inside of him, redoubling in on themselves, and because they're originating from G-Force energy, I should be able to control it better. I'll launch him back into the portal, which is starting to get super unstable, and then let him explode in his own dimension; problem solved."_

"_You speak this as if it will be an easy feat."_

"_I may be a rookie at being a hero/champion of earth, but i'm pretty sure easy doesn't come with the job description. Hell, sometimes 'possible' might be a little far fetched. Still, we can't just roll over and take the L; we gotta try."_

"_You and your inspirational words of courage…...fine, let's get this over with."_

"_Alright! Green Team for the win! I only wish Thor was here to see what i'm about to do!"_

"_Imbecile."_

"_Killjoy."_

Now that the groundwork had been set for the homestretch, I focused on getting Demon King ready for his home going extravaganza. Without taking down my barrier, I generated a lot of sand; enough to make my own Sahara Desert. I manipulated the G-Force around Demon King into a huge mesocyclone, and added the sand into the mix. Again, one of those rare moments where I actually had to thank Gaea, cuz there was no way I had the strength to control all of this on my own; seriously, this storm was more of a hurricane. Now that Demon King was distracted, I dropped my barrier, flew into the cyclone, and started thrashing him. I made the sand surge with G-Force, while simultaneously striking him with G-Force bolts from all ends. I tired aiming exactly at his energy points, as they seemed to fill even faster from direct attacks, but that didn't stop me from blasting him everywhere else too. Demon King definitely tried to fight back though. He started swirling himself, forming a cyclone inside of a cyclone, and started spewing demonic fire and lightning in all directions. They were easy enough to dodge and block. If I had space, i'd just maneuver around or over them. If not, I took a handful of sand from the cyclone, made a shield construct, and let that take the blow. I kept up the cyclone effort until Demon King's energy points were at their peak; it was time.

"_HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" _Demon King started to laugh. "_GO AHEAD, FINISH IT! MY VICTORY IS ALL BUT ASSURED NOW!"_

"_YOU KNOW WHAT, DUDE!?" _I shouted back at him. "_YOU'RE RIGHT! THIS IS YOUR DAY, LET'S HAVE A BALL!"_

I summoned the ten gold balls, about the size of shotputs, via Geo-Portals, and willed them to rocket into Demon King's energy points. I willed the cyclone to get more intense, swirling fast enough to rip the flesh off of an elephant, and flew outside of it. I ditched my Titanic Avenger suit, soared as fast as I could away from the blast zone, and once I was a good 300 miles away, started the big boom.

When Gaea said that it would be easy to break atoms, I assumed she was just exaggerating, just trying to scare me into being careful. Yeah, for those of you that have ever ripped a paper in half, you know how easy it was for me to break atoms. It was the same process used to transmute elements, but instead of covering the atoms with a microscopic layer of G-Force, I cut the atoms with a microscopic G-Force knife. Oh, and just so we're clear, it wasn't just one, two, or ten bombs going off. I sliced maybe a good 20-30 atoms at once. I could've ended all the wars in half a second…...that's either super awesome, or super terrifying. Anyway, the bombs went off, and everything went bright; like all white bright. I immediately focused my attention on containing and circulating the blast, making it stay within a 300 mile radius. To say that it was hard, is an insult to how close I was to failing at it. Imagine trying to push back ten different asteroids at once, now imagine doing that, while trying to deflect a tidal wave that could swallow the east coast for breakfast. Keeping the blast contained, keeping the pollution of Demon King's combustion, it was nothing to joke about. I willed the cyclone to pick up in speed, and while keeping the blast circulated, I willed the G-Force that was now mixed with Demon King's formless body. Through my tears of excruciating strain, the roar of the explosions/Demon King's guttural roars of pain, I could sense the last portal to Tartarus or whatever closing rapidly. I couldn't take it slow, I didn't have time for patience, either Demon King went back to hell in a hand basket, or Gaea was f*(#&amp; . With all of our combined strength, Gaea and I compacted the cyclone into Demon King, and basically cannonballed it into the portal just as it closed; I kid you not, we maybe had a millisecond to spare. I didn't see the explosion, and because it was taking place in an alternate reality, I couldn't even sense it, but I had a hunch that Tartarus and friends wouldn't be a problem for a while. I immediately felt Gaea leave my body, and the shock was so sudden, so jolting to my senses, that I immediately passed out.

I probably would've fallen to….infinity I guess, but by the time I woke up, I was back at my mansion. Gaea sat me down on one of the patio chairs, and was sitting just in front of me. Her face was something of a mix of pride, humor, and 'what the f*(# am I gonna do with you?'. She snapped her fingers, and another glass of G-Force Gatorade materialized on the table. I drank it all, and my energy gradually started to return. Still, something felt off with me. I guess I never thought of it while we were bonded, but I was like a glass that was only 1/10th of the way full. Gaea was the rest that topped me off. Now that she was gone, I felt so much weaker, less awesome, and more importantly, almost devoid of emotion. Gaea's thousand year rage fest kinda burned away the rest of my emotional neurons; I was struggling just to care about anything really.

"Well," Gaea said aloud. "That was something."

"Yeah," I said after a brief pause. "Let's never do it again."

"No promises."

"Whatever."

Gaea twiddled with her hands a bit. Guess even goddesses get nervous.

"I…..I apologize for what I said," she said. " The truth is, you were right. After five thousand years, I have barely changed. Just angry. Forever vengeful at everything. I have not learned from my mistakes, nor have I tried to correct them. Sometimes I am in awe at humans. At how many mistakes you make, how many times you fail, yet still find a way to overcome your shortcomings. In all honesty, if you humans could grasp the concept of immortality, maybe change up a few of your behaviors, you'd be better rulers of the universe than us gods."

"Thanks," I responded. "I'm sorry too. I just…...I can't…...I never meant…..I just want to be better. And you were right too, it shouldn't have taken-"

A surge of sadness erupted in the center of my chest. It was like someone had dumped ice cold water right in my heart. The emotional change came with a vengeance, I almost started bawling right on the spot, but I felt Gaea take my hand, before pulling me in for a big hug. First off, the fact that Gabrielle Union was hugging me, that was in itself a pick me up. Still, Gaea felt warm, safe, grandmotherly. I've never met my great grandmother, but i'm pretty sure hugging her would've felt exactly like this. My sadness ebbed away, and as Gaea backed away from me, I felt more emotionally stable.

"Sorry," she said. "You were never meant to feel the pain of a goddess, the burdens of immortals were never meant for humans to bear."

"Kinda late for that," I responded, actually finding enough emotion in me to chuckle. "Do you not remember, like, the last billion years?"

"Humph. Nice to see your terrible sense of humor is still untouched."

"Yup, can't take that away from me."

"We'll see."

Gaea and I shared our first laugh together, and then went silent again.

"So," I said after a while. "What now?"

"Now," Gaea said. "I send you back, it's getting close to 8 A.M., and I imagine people will start to realize your absence. We won't be able to do another one of these sessions for a while, but i'll get on teaching you how to convert your skin into metal after you've emotionally recovered."

"You're gonna turn me into a multi metal Colossus?"

"Colossus will wish he was you."

Gaea stopped talking suddenly, her eyes went wide, and she seemed to be a million miles away.

"Oh," she finally said, looking dead at me. "No rest for the weary today."

"What are you talking abo-"

The ground beneath me changed, and I found myself inside the same tube that brought me to the Geo-Nexus

"You'll see," Gaea managed to say before I shot off. "Have fun!"

For the record, exiting the Geo-Nexus is as heart stopping, butt clenching, and seizure inducing, as entering it. Probably would've vomited after the tube ejected me, but their was nothing to vomit up. Besides, as soon as my feet touched actual ground, my morpher went off, and I was teleported out of there.


	17. Chapter 17: We Go Deep Sea Diving

**Chapter 17: We Go Deep Sea Diving**

(Jason's Perspective)

I'm getting tired of this sudden teleportation nonsense. It's jarring, annoying, and if we didn't get up as early as we did, Allyson and I would've been in a mission briefing half naked. S.H.I.E.L.D. should really get on this new thing called intercoms, they're a lot better than the system they're using now. Anyway, after my vision righted itself, I noticed that this was not the war room from a couple of days ago. There were no drones, missiles, other things you'd see in a Black Ops game, but the scenery was still freaky enough. In front of Allyson and I, was this RIDICULOUSLY huge glass table, that looked like it was mixed with every piece of technology ever. The glass itself was inside by this really thick rectangle of some type of metal; the thing was about as high as my waist. Four thick tubes, all of which were channeling some type of energy, were plugged into each side, and were snaking all though the infrastructure of the entire room, which was about the size of a school gym. Didn't know what the hell this was, but since it was new, big, and weird looking (like most of the new things i've been exposed to recently), I got the feeling that i'd be doing something that would get me dangerously close to death…..again. On the opposite side of the table, Fury and Kennedy were waiting. Kennedy and Hill looked absolutely horrible, like they haven't been near a bed in forever. Fury, who probably didn't even need to sleep, had a different vibe altogether. He looked furious (heh, accidental pun, but kinda funny)! No, not in an "_I was doing something fun, and now I have to deal with this $#!+"_ type of way, but more of a "_I'm mad at something someone did" _type of way. Seriously, if the guy had laser vision, i'm pretty sure the Helicarrier wouldn't survive the day.

"YOU!" he shouted, surprising me.

Usually when that word is shouted, it's directed at me, but Fury was not looking in my direction. His vision was to my right, so he obviously wasn't looking at Allyson (she's too much of a teacher's pet to get yelled at anyway); and that's when it hit me. I wasn't paying attention, and I was so distracted by the scenery, blaring alarms, and weird $#!+ in front of me, that I didn't realize Grant was literally right beside me! The dude looked….well, kinda not all there. Oh, he had put on some extra muscle, and his workout clothes clung to his body with sweat, but his eyes were blank as hell. He just looked absolutely done with everything, like he simply had no more f*(#$ to give. Don't get me wrong, I trusted Grant (as much as you can trust someone you just met), but I suddenly felt a shiver of fear crawl up my spine. If this guy ever snapped, decided to turn to the dark side, he'd be a pretty dangerous enemy for ANY hero. I secretly gave Grant quite a bit of $#!+ for his super friendly, hyper excited, unbearably heroic nature, but right now, I was missing that quite a lot. Anyway, as you can imagine, it wasn't me or Allyson that Fury had a problem with (cuz in all honesty, we punished each other enough); but Grant had a lot of explaining to do.

"WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!" he continued, either forgetting or not caring about the fact that he was yelling at a guy who could tear through steel. "WHERE DO YOU GET THE GALL TO JUST FLY OFF OF MY SHIP?! YOU KNOW, I COULD HAVE YOU HANGING UPSIDE DOWN IN A CELL ON ANOTHER DIMENSION IF I WANTED TO! WHAT THE ACTUAL-"

Grant leaned on the weird table, tapped a finger on the glass….and it turned to sand! I. Am. Not. Kidding. Grant tapped a finger once on the table, and after a quick wave of green energy, it all fell to the floor as sand. Yeah, i've never seen anyone stop their words to a grinding halt as fast as Fury did. Allyson actually jumped a bit, and I had to put my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. When did Grant become a discount King Midas?! So yeah, Fury, Hill, and Kennedy were extremely silent (probably not wanting Grant to do that to their faces), but Grant wasn't exactly done being scary. He snapped his fingers, and the sand started to move together, converging into the shape of the space where the glass on the table used to be. He snapped his fingers again, and the sand quite literally changed into a thin sheet of gold (now he really was King Midas), probably worth more than my house. The gold levitated back to center of the empty table, and after it was in place, Grant tapped it again, turning it back to glass. Dude, where's a mike when you need one, cuz Grant didn't just drop it, he straight up shattered it!

"I was out," Grant said plainly, not the least bit abashed. "Went to catch up with a friend, kinda lost track of the time. I saved the world, AGAIN, while I was out, no thanks necessary. Now, if were done pretending like you can actually step up to me, can you get on with the mission explaining here?"

And I thought I was rebellious. Seriously, Grant straight up lost his $#!+; what the hell happened to him last night?

"Don't think we're done here, Jackson," Fury still glared Grant down (gotta admire that bravery). "You still got a lot of questions to answer, assuming you live long enough to answer them."

"Lookin' forward to it," Grant not even half heartedly responded.

Fury tapped his edge of the table, and I could see some type of touch screen keyboard looking thing come to life. He started typing frantically, and the table hummed to life, projecting a huge display of the earth. He moved his fingers the same way a person does when they zoom into a picture on their phone (unless you have the ones that suck), and the picture adjusted as such. The image zoomed over an area about 200 miles off the coast of New Zealand, and boy was it a doozy! As someone who's literally been an F5 tornado, i've gotta say that this storm made me look like a panzie. A single storm cloud was stretching out, and cycling a 100 mile radius. Lightning was flashing every half second, and if there was any audio, i'd imagine all we'd be able to hear was BOOM! BOOM! CRACK! BOOM! But that wasn't even the biggest thing. Obviously this was the stone of Zeus (thanks gramps), and currently speaking, it was responsible for at least a dozen tornados going off at once. They weren't terribly big (F3s at the most), but there were so many, spread out so far, I softly sighed in relief; if this was even 50 miles in the direction of any civilization, so many people would've died. Still, I couldn't count my blessings just yet. Just off to the side (this was some really on point live feed), Doom's ship, quite literally flashed into existence, in a huge wave of green, similar to the way Dr. Strange transported the Helicarrier to the zombie battle. Doom's ship was….impressive I guess. It had the same type of look to it as the Helicarrier, but made entirely of what I assume was Titanium. It was bigger, bulkier, had Doom's f*(#!^&amp; face as the ship head. Seriously, his entire face, was the whole front of the ship! As soon as it appeared, dozens of flares of yellow and orange flew off the ship, and straight into the storm. The image zoomed onto those figures (I seriously needed this thing for watching movies), and I recognized them as Doctor Doom, Executioner, Fin Fang Foom (big green dragon), and Radioactive Man (glowing green bald Chinese man, with the body of Brock Lesnar); the rest of the assaulting force was Doombot fodder. No sooner than they entered the fray, the clouds surrounding the bulk of the storm started to change and malform. The process took a good couple of seconds, but man was it worth the payoff! I recognized them from _The Lost Hero _(love that book); Venti. They were mostly humanoid shaped, just made of lightning charged cloud, exactly like my Storm Form. The only noticeable differences was the lack of dreads, talons on their hands, and evil cannibalistic faces that would give a small child nightmares. Dooms lackeys flew straight into the storm, which was followed by massive flares of golden fire, lightning, and an increase in the swirling of the winds. Fury only kept the image up for a few more seconds, but by the looks of it, Doom and his crew were holding their own pretty good. Fury swept his hand through the air, and the image compartmentalized into a cube, and placed itself on the side of the table.

"So that's our next mission?" Grant asked him. "Looks easy enough."

"Are you kidding?!" Allyson almost shrieked at him. "When's the last time you fought a hurricane, Grant?"

"Last night."

"Regardless of what you spent your night doing," Fury chimed in (although he looked a little stunned too). "We still have another problem on our hands."

He tapped his keypad a few more times (bet he missed his clicker), and the globe zoomed in over the area of the Atlantic Ocean. I already knew what was up here, and based on the quick glance she gave me, so did Allyson. A blue dot, showed up in the middle of the holographic sea, and my breath clenched a bit.

"In addition to the storm, God I miss Thor, the EM sensor, this entire room, picked a massive, BEYOND massive, energy signature deep in the middle of the Atlantic. We don't have eyes under the sea, but we can put two and two together."

"The stone of Poseidon," I spoke up.

"Indeed, Fuller. Looks like it's crunch time."

"Then let's hop to it," Grant said. "Obviously scuba diving is out, so let's just catch up to Doom, and nab the stone of Zeus before-"

"No!" I blurted out, surprising the hell out of Fury and Grant.

P.S. You know you're about to say something ridiculous, when Grant and Fury are teaming up to give you a "_da f*(#?!" _look.

"What do you mean, "no"?" Fury asked me (I could practically see a vein throbbing on his head). "In case it's not clear, Doom is on the verge of getting the stone of your great whatever times granddaddy. Plus, it's a giant storm, this is right up your alley!"

"Look," I responded, really hoping the words coming out of my mouth would make sense. "First of all, that storm is way too close to New Zealand, and it's getting closer every second. Whether Doom knows it or not, he's saving a lot of lives right now, by trying to neutralize it. If we try to fight him, AND the storm, we're just putting a lot of people in danger. As much as it's gonna kill you to do it, we gotta let Doom have this one."

"What are you suggesting, Mr. Fuller? That we just take the day off, send Doom a thank you card?"

"I'm suggesting we go after the stone of Poseidon."

Again, all eyes (except Allyson's) were on me, and they were not very approving. Hell, I could practically see Fury struggling not to face palm me.

"Now, here me out," I quickly started again, knowing i'd never get the floor again if I stopped. "Normally, i'd be all for trying to get the more obvious, less impossibly dangerous to retrieve stone, but in addition to the obvious reasons not to, I also kinda sorta had a dream last night."

I quickly recounted the main points of my dream; you know, the parts with the warlord trying to take over Atlantis. As I talked, Fury's attitude of not having any of me, started to dull at the edges. He may not have been all for my plan, but he at least considered the logic.

"Ok," Fury said. "Let's hypothetically say that I was to agree to send you into an underwater war. How would you even turn the tides? Atlantis has to be outnumbered 10 to 1 based on how you described it."

"Dude," Grant spoke up. "Numbers mean jack squat to us. Heck, if you wanna get the best of both, why don't we split up. Jas-"

"No." I interrupted Grant (the glares were real). "For the third time, we gotta let Doom have the sky. Besides, we need to stay together. Sure we can definitely wreak some havoc as solo fighters, but we're gonna need to pull a billion aces out of our sleeves to turn the battle for Atlantis around. It's gotta be all hands on deck for this one."

"Is it really worth letting Doom get another stone?" Mrs. Kennedy asked me.

"For the billionth time," I responded. "He's doing something good, let's give him a freebie. Besides, Attuma and Namor are currently fighting over Atlantis AND the stone of Poseidon; do you really want him to get a hold of either?"

"Pause," Allyson spoke up. "Who exactly is this Attuma guy anyway?"

"Atlantean warlord," Fury said. "Namor's rival and enemy. He's been trying to take the throne of Atlantis for years, been gettin' pretty damn close sometimes."

"So if he gets the stone? If he takes over Atlantis?"

"First thing he'd do is probably attack the surface; he's tried it before."

"Didn't The Avengers, and Fantastic Four always stonewall him though?" Grant asked.

"Very true," Fury said. "But The Avengers, the main ones, are off world, and The Fantastic Four are in another dimension; i'm stuck with you three."

"Then let's prioritize," I urged Fury. "If Doom gets another stone, it's no big deal. He obviously needs the full set to do whatever he needs to do; and if that's the case, rather by a deal or by force, the stone of Poseidon will get in his hands."

"You think he's in cahoots with a Attuma?" Fury asked me.

"I think it's way too much of a coincidence that Doom would be getting a stone in one place, while someone just as bad is trying to get another; on top of control of an entire underwater nation."

"I agree with Jason," Allyson spoke up (thank God). "Aside from getting the stone, we have to help Atlantis; A place I didn't think was actually real, but still full of innocent people that need some assistance."

I expected a response similar to "_Aww, aren't you cute, thinking we care about other people." _Instead, Fury and Kennedy actually took her seriously for a second. How come I never get that benefit?

"Even if you pull this off," Fury started. "Namor is a stubborn son of a bitch. If he even believes he has a small claim to the stone, he'll fight for its custody harder than a divorced couple."

"We'll persuade him," I said. "Or else, we might just have to take it."

"It's like you want to start a war."

"What else are we supposed to do?"

"We negotiate," Allyson said, clearly seeing my deteriorating pitch. "If we can get him to let us take the stone, fine. If not, well, Namor's had the stone this long. If we warn him about Doom's plan, tell him to keep his defenses up, is it really all that devastating if he has it; I can't vouch for him, but i'm pretty sure there are worse people than Namor."

Fury thought on that for a bit.

"Allyson?" he asked her. "Why are you not the leader again?"

"Diplomacy," she responded. "Plus, I really just don't want to be."

"A shame, I actually like you."

Fury turned his attention back to me.

"You understand I can't just LET Doom win, right?" he asked me.

"One round isn't the whole fight, man," I responded.

"Nevertheless, i'll do what has to be done. If you feel you can help in Atlantis, be my guest, but I have a job to do."

"Speaking of Atlantis," Grant said. "You know, that UNDERWATER city? How are we supposed to get there?"

"I know the way," I said. "Dreams. But I don't suppose you have something that can help non water breathers survive the depths of the sea, Fury?"

"It's like you have no idea what S.H.I.E.L.D. is." Fury said.

He pulled out a walkie talkie, and activated it.

"Mr. Wingfoot," he spoke into it.

"Sir?" a voice spoke back.

"Prepare a Quinjet, plot a course for S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost A-311-QN."

"The Atlantis observation outpost? I assume this is a special occasion?"

"Understatement. Send authorization credentials to the outpost: Fuller, Jason T. Jackson, Grant U. Grace, Allyson T."

"Got it sir, Quinjet will be ready in two minutes, send passengers to the deck of the ship."

Fury put the walkie talkie up.

"Well?" he asked us. "What are you waiting for?"

"Morphin time?" Allyson asked me and Grant.

"Oh, not yet!" Grant said.

He quickly changed his code name setting from Super-G, to Geo-Titan. Usually he'd be ecstatic about this. Sure, he had a bit of amusement in him, but his signature fanboy attitude was severely cut in half. Ugh, it's really sad when I actually WANT my teammates to be annoyingly cheerful! After we morphed, we got teleported to the deck of the Helicarrier (who controls that?), and waited for our ride. As we waited, I heard Grant's communicator go off.

"Yeah?" Grant responded.

"Mr. Jackson," Fury spoke out of it. "Just for future reference, mind your manners."

Grant suddenly clutched the side of his head, and dropped to a knee screaming.

"GEO-TITAN!" Allyson and I screamed, as we rushed to help him.

"FURY, STOP!" Allyson screamed into her communicator. "YOU'RE HURTING HIM, PLEASE!"

Grant stopped screaming, but was still clutching his head, as if getting over a wicked brain freeze.

"A reminder," Fury said through Grant's communicator. "I may not be able to lift battleships, but I can still keep you all in line."

Grant's eyes went green with Geo-Force (he told everyone what it was), and looked like he wanted to go down and smash Fury himself.

"_No, dude!" _I said, grabbing his shoulder. "_Fury is not the enemy. He's a total tool, but we've got bigger fish to fry, pun unintended. Save that rage for the people who deserve it."_

Technically, Fury would land in that department too, but hopefully, Grant would still keep it together. He stood up, and activated his communicator.

"Understood, sir," he said, struggling to keep his voice in check.

Fury didn't respond, but the message was pretty clear. He could end us, but we could end him too. In other words, it was a good thing we were on the same side. About a minute later, a hangar door opened up, and a weird looking jet came rolling out. It's thrusters were bigger than any of the standard jets on the ship, and its wings were folded. I couldn't tell much about planes and stuff, but i'm pretty sure this thing could easily outstrip any other jet on the planet. The jet rolled out to us, and opened its rear door. Unlike any of the other ones, there was only one seat in the cockpit (no shotgun for Grant), and that was already taken by our pilot. He was a buff Native American (I think), with short black hair, wearing a red T-Shirt and jeans. He had a friendly demeanor, and even went out of his way to come and shake our hands.

"Hey, guys," he said in a gruff voice. "Wyatt Wingfoot. It's an honor to meet you. The reputation you've already built for yourselves is impressive."

"Thanks," I said, cuz Allyson and Grant were to busy blushing and cheesing to say anything. "So, we ready to go?"

"Yup, just get strapped in, and we'll be on our way."

"Wait," Grant said. "Aren't we going underwater?"

Wyatt laughed.

"Don't worry about it kid," Wyatt said. "The Quinjet can handle it, trust me. Now if there are no more questions, we can get started."

Grant, Allyson and I quickly walked inside, and took our seats. Since Grant couldn't have shotgun, he settled for sitting on his own, just across from Allyson and I. Dude looked so emo, it was actually almost painful to watch.

"_You ok, Geo-Titan?" _Allyson asked him.

"_Peachy," _he thought back to her. "_Lemme know when it's time to punch stuff."_

He ducked his head, stretched out his feet, and tried to pretend he was sleeping (I always used the same trick to get out of talks about my day with my mom).

"_What's his deal?" _I thought to Allyson. "_How come he's so pissy?"_

"_He's adjusting," _Allyson thought back to me. "_I dunno what he did last night, or how he got his new powers, but he obviously saw/did some pretty extreme stuff. We'll talk to him. After the mission, we'll help him through it. Besides, you're one to talk about being pissy."_

"_What's that supposed to mean?!"_

"_You're literally brooding and scowling with folded arms, right now."_

"_Huh?"_

I looked down, and quickly unfolded my arms.

"_That...I mean...shut up!"_

Allyson smiled, and tried hard to not bust out laughing.

"Alright, guys!" Wyatt called back to us. "We're ready to go!"

I relaxed a bit in my seat, bracing myself for what was to be (in my perception) a long ride. I braced myself for the whole jet running down a runway thing, but it never came. This jet simply floated in the air, and took off. Points for style, I guess.

9:00 A.M. December 17, 2014, Somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

Gotta admit, the jet was pretty damn fast. Obviously not faster than me, but fast enough to where I didn't get too bored. Seriously, this thing was going at Mach 3. After a certain point, I felt the speed of the jet decrease drastically, and I had to steady my breathing, knowing what was coming next.

"Brace yourself, guys!" Wyatt said over the intercom. "We're going down!"

The jet started to veer forward in an angle, and before I knew it (I had my eyes closed), we hit the water. Ok, let's get this straight. I. AM. NOT. AFRAID. OF. WATER. However, I do have a fear of suffocation (I almost drowned when I was eight, and almost suffocated while playing in a trash bag when I was ten). Descending deeper and deeper into the ocean, all I could think of was how I hoped this thing could survive the pressure, and how i'd survive if it didn't. Personally, I thought I did a good job of masking my fear.

"_You're afraid of water, aren't you, Jason?" _Allyson asked me (I did not do a good job of masking my fear).

"_Not water," _I responded. "_Just drowning and/or suffocating; it's a child phobia. What tipped you off?"_

"_You're eyes have been closed shut since we hit the water. Plus, you actually bent the edge of your seat."_

I opened my eyes, and examined my chair. Huh, guess it's hard to remember, or at least by comparison to Grant and Allyson, but I was pretty strong now. I was just glad this wasn't some poor schmuck's hand.

"_Just be calm, Jason," _Allyson tried to assure me. "_I'll save you if the ship implodes."_

"_Stop playing!" _I almost yelled into her head.

She smiled deviously at me, as the ship descended deeper into the ocean.

It took us about ten more minutes to actually get to the outpost, which still didn't make me any less anxious. It was pretty plain looking. Just a huge metal rectangular building, with some type of tube that traveled to a smaller, square shaped building; gee, wonder what that was for? Wyatt, steered the ship into a hangar type entrance to the outpost, and settled the plane down for a landing. As soon as we touched down, the water drained from the landing area, and Wyatt opened the back door for Grant, Allyson, and I to get out. We quickly unbuckled, got out, and climbed the ladder up to the main floor. Now, I didn't exactly know what to expect in the waiting area of an undersea bunker, but it sure as hell wasn't this. The place was decked out with black furniture, a high tech computer bay that was displaying live feed from the perimeter, a plasma screen propped on the wall, and a kitchen area that had a fridge, stove, microwave, and tons of cabinets, probably stacked with snacks and cooking food.

"Seriously?" Grant asked, once he got a look at the place. "You're just gonna eat snacks and watch Netflix while we go to war?"

"Hey," said Wyatt. "Gotta pass the time somehow."

He walked the kitchen, put his hand on the wall, and after entering in a code on a holographic keyboard, the wall opened up, revealing that long tube that connected this part of the outpost to the other.

"Just head to the end of the tube, and wait for the sensors to scan you," Wyatt said. "After you're inside, Agent Kennedy will brief you with further instructions; good luck."

We told him thanks, shook his hand, and walked down the tube. As soon as we reached the end of the hallway, a ray of blue slight scanned us from head to toe, and after a bit of rumbling, the door opened for us. Inside was this kind of dive chamber, but different. For starters, instead of being tube-like, it was shaped like a square. There were high tech devices racked on the walls (jet packs, rebreather masks, etc), a TV screen propped up on the wall, and four tubes, big enough for a person to stand in, at every corner of the chamber. Also, the floor had a zig zag pattern going down the middle of a square-like opening; that made me all the more anxious. A few seconds later, the screen buzzed to life, and Mrs. Kennedy's face popped up.

"Ok, Delta Force," she said. "Listen up. The four tubes you see lined in the room, are nanite dispensers. Once inside your bloodstream, the nanites will adjust your lungs to be able to breathe water, the same way Atlanteans do, as well as adjust your body density, to be able to withstand the pressure and cold of the ocean floor. These nanites will last for a 24 hour period before collectively dying in your digestive tract, after which they will exit your body via a date with the toilet. However, seeing as it probably WON'T take you an entire day to do whatever it is you think you have to do down there, the nanites can be ejected from your body via the tubes. Any questions?"

"Can we talk to fish too?" Grant asked her (actually had to hide a snigger).

"Just get in the tubes," Mrs. Kennedy said, absolutely and completely done with him. "After the gas fills them, breathe in as deeply as you can five times. Once the appropriate amount of nanite are in your bloodstream, the tube will let you out."

I looked at my teammates, and after a few collective "meh" shrugs, we all walked towards a tube. The tube I went to made a small entry for me (looked like melting tartar sauce from that Spongebob episode with Man-Ray), and closed back up once I was inside. As soon as it closed, a weird white puff of gas completely filled the tube in one blast. It was jarring, but I did as I was instructed, and breathed in as deep as I could five times. The smoke tasted horrible, and the skin on my face crawled like hell, but after a good thirty seconds, I heard a ping, and the tube let me out. I felt incomplete, like my body was ready to shift its structure at any moment. Grant and Allyson were also done with the nanite ingesting, and joined me just outside the opening floor area.

"Ok," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Everything looks all set. I'll open the dive chamber; good luck."

The floor started to rumble and open, revealing a pool sized section of dark black looking water. At that moment, it really dawned on me….I was putting a lot of trust into the supposed nanites that were gonna somehow just "give" me the ability to survive a million miles underwater. Since when did I start to trust people? What the hell was I becoming? For a moment, I almost backed out, but I felt Allyson grab my hand. I was gonna pull away, simply because I didn't wanna make Grant a third wheel (plus I didn't wanna look weak in front of the team), but when I looked over, Allyson was holding his hand too. His "_da f*(#?" _face was so real, I almost laughed.

"We're a team," Allyson said, not even remotely ashamed. "We do this together."

She looked at me as she said that last line, giving me a quick wink. It was all I could do to not hug her. She knew how scared I was, and was determined to not let me do this alone. Even better, she wasn't gonna embarrass me, or let Grant be alone either (seriously, what was up with him?). Yeah, at this point, even I was wondering why she wasn't team leader. Grant kinda shrugged, and I went along with it too.

"On three?" I asked her.

"Nope," she said, as she jumped into the water, dragging me and Grant with her.

The first thing that hit me like a punch to the gut, was the cold. It was like 30 degrees down here. As a New Yorker, i'm used to that; but even then, New Yorkers (or at least normal ones) don't go to swimming at the beach during December. The freezing water was such a shock to my system (puns), I accidentally gasped, taking in a good mouthful of seawater. All of a sudden, then cold wasn't so bad; now I was drowning! I was actually drowning! I tried to cut off the flow, but I had already swallowed too much water, it was no good. Hell, now that I mention it, the pressure was pretty much like being compacted between two busses. If not for the armor, plus my enhanced durability, i'd already be dead. I struggled for maybe a good ten seconds before my suffering came to an end; as in 10 to zero, in 0.5 seconds. Seriously, whatever those nanites were did, they did them really freaking well (took them long enough). One second, I was drowning, the next, my body couldn't tell the difference between water and air. The same principles applied for the pressure and cold. I may as well have been swimming in room temperature, and the pressure from being so deep underwater may as well have been non existent. Also, the darkness was slowly starting to illuminate. Just like my dream, my eyes seemed to be adjusting to the pitch black. Now everything was more of a really dark greyish blue. I quickly looked over at Grant and Allyson. Thankfully, the nanites were working for them too (it would suck if these things ever malfunctioned). They looked a little shaken, but after a few moments of getting their bearings, they seemed ok.

"_Well that sucked," _Grant helpfully said. "_Now what, Storm-Lord? Where to now?"_

At first, I didn't really have an answer. Sure, we could survive the trip now, but as far as destination went, nobody drew up a map, and winging it wasn't exactly gonna fly underwater (don't worry, i'll facepalm myself for that one). Still, the stone was calling out to me. Wait! Now before you give me a "bull$#!+" gesture, just hear me out on this one. It was basically like the stone of Ares; just without the urge for blood. The power of the stone of Poseidon was resonating through the water, even from God knows how many miles away. It wasn't exactly a focused point of energy, but it was coming from a general direction. If I could could correlate the energy signature with the landmarks (the trench, Janus' battlefield, etc.) it would most likely lead us to Atlantis. That's if the deadly carnivorous sea monsters didn't kill us first.

"_We go that way," _I thought to Grant, pointing east of the bunker.

"_That way?" _Allyson thought to me, trying hard to mask her doubt. "_Why that way?"_

"_I can feel the stone's energy resonating through the water," _I thought back to her. "_Just like back with the stone of Ares; just without the urge for blood. Wait, don't you guys feel it?"_

Grant and Allyson shook their heads. Weird. We all felt the effects of the Ares stone, why was this any different?

"_Okaaaay," _I thought to them. "_That's kinda awkward. How much do you trust me?"_

"_You've been mostly ok at this," _Allyson started. "_So i'll give you the benefit of the doubt."_

"_Yeah, i'll go along with it too," _Grant thought to me. "_Let's go find Nemo."_

Well, at least he still had his bad sense of humor. After agreeing on that course of action, we started heading towards Atlantis. Can't believe i'm saying those words.

Starting out, the journey to Atlantis was very boring. Oh, don't get me wrong, I was breathing underwater, swimming on the ocean floor, and being completely unaffected by it; I was silently flipping my $#!+! Still, swimming, even at super speed, was kinda boring. Oh yeah, for those of you that wondered how I would get along without running, the truth was, pretty damn good. While Grant and Allyson were flying (lazy), Allyson actually illuminating everything within a ten foot radius, I was kicking my legs, and moving my arms fast enough to swim at a good 100 mph. Don't worry, while the effort was a considerable step up from running, my body was more than up to the task; besides, if I used my Thunder Form, I might accidentally fry my teammates. So yeah, the first leg of the journey was pretty boring. The only upside was the fact that the underwater scenery was pretty dope. Different coral reefs, schools of interesting looking fish, and some unsavory looking ocean predators (Grant had to punch out a few mutated looking sharks). Still, we were on the right track. Thanks to my photographic memory, I remembered certain landmarks on the way to the trench. It was slow work to get there, but thankfully, nothing overly weird tried to kill us. Once we got there though, I ordered the team to halt.

"_Alright guys," _I thought to them. "_We're on the right track. We swim straight through this thing, we get to where Janus died, then it's a hundred mile swim to the second leg of the swim to Atlantis."_

"_Second leg?" _Grant asked me.

"_Big deep chasm; goes deeper than any documented diver ever has. From there, it'll be a straight shot to the city; albeit, littered with sea monsters."_

"_What about Janus?" _Allyson asked me. "_I mean, we don't know him, but maybe we should take his body back to his people."_

"_And lug the extra, literal dead weight?" _Grant asked. "_Not exactly a smart idea. But, if you wanna get all sentimental, I can sense a dead body a hundred miles out, somewhere under some….really tall rocks; like underwater mountains. I can mark it, make sure his friends know where to find him."_

"_Couldn't you just use your portal thing you did last night, and transport him to Atlantis?"_

"_Hold up!" _I interrupted them. "_Sunbird, you're a genius! Geo-Titan, how about you just portal us to Atlantis?!"_

"_Well….." _Grant thought for a while. "_Yeah, I kinda can't."_

"_How come?"_

"_Well, I just ran the idea by Gaea, and the thing is, if the portal isn't made on solid ground, one earth plane to another, the molecules will get way too distorted and mixed up. The only thing it'd be worth is turning us into soup."_

"_Oh, well that sucks," _Allyson stated. "_Guess we're doing it hitchhiker style."_

"_Guess so," _I said. "_Still, we gotta pick up the pace. Let's go at half Mach 1. Geo-Titan, you're our eyes. If you detect any enemies, warn us ahead of time. I'll fly behind you guys, and at a good space away; don't wanna electrocute anyone. Ok, we all set?"_

"_Yeah," _they both thought to me.

"_Alright, let's do it."_

Flying through the trench, I could really feel the tension build up. Not just with the pressure (thank God the nanites adjusted for the pressure as we went deeper), or the resonating power of the stone of Poseidon, but with the eerie feeling that the trench was giving me. This is one of those instances where i'd totally swim over the trench, not through it. I flew a good 50 meters behind Grant and Allyson. Grant was flying high, using his enhanced vision, hearing, and X-Ray vision, to scope out any potential enemies. Allyson was flying low (we didn't want her shine to give away our position). At half Mach 1, flying through the trench was easy (especially with no monsters). For me, this was the equivalent of a light jog. Nothing too strenuous, but it was obvious that I needed a bit more endurance practice with flight. Anyway, I was just starting to see the edge of the trench, when Grant stopped me and Allyson suddenly.

"_Hold guys!" _he thought urgently to us, forcing us to slam on the brakes (especially me).

"_What's up?" _Allyson thought to him.

"_Fish guys?" _he uncertainty thought to us. "_Like, fifty of them with sharp teeth."_

"_Piranhaoids," _I thought to him. "_Bad guys."_

"_Okaaay. We also got fifty eel guys, and two….sea serpents?"_

"_Yeah. Krang suggested that Attuma break off a small squadron for guard duty."_

"_He knew we were coming?"_ Allyson asked me.

"_Not exactly," _I thought to her. "_But he found it suspicious that Janus would be away from the main battle."_

"_Speaking of him," _Grant thought to us. "_His body is literally below us. Right at the base of this rock. I can….oh, $#!+"_

"_What's up?"_ I asked him.

"_The sea monsters, they're spreading out, trying to out maneuver us; they know we're here!"_

"_Should we attack?" _Allyon asked him.

"_No need," _Grant responded. "_They've got the bad luck of being near too many solid rock formations. Just give me a sec."_

Grant clenched his fist, and his face squinted in concentration. A second later, I heard multiple breaks, like chipping stone, followed by multiple whizzing sounds. Even underwater, I could hear the THUDS, THUCKS, and THUMPS of rock piercing flesh. I couldn't see them, but the poor bastards were probably in disarray, struggling to get their bearings for even a moment. The sounds of death echoed on for a good ten seconds before Grant let up.

"_The little guys are dead," _he thought to us. "_All that's left is the two sea serpents; and that's soon to be one." _

Grant summoned his axe, and shot off the the far left.

"_That dude has no respect for authority," _I thought to Allyson.

"_Oh, hush," _she thought back to me. "_Let him vent a little."_

She flew off to the right, and I followed.

Finding a giant Cretan Sea Serpent is not hard; especially from a high view. However, I could see how one might be taken off guard by one. The thing was low, near dirt level. It's dark green skin actually camouflaged well in dark crevices. From what I could tell, this thing couldn't breathe fire (or whatever it is sea monsters use for mouth blasts), but it's perfectly good set of razor sharp teeth compensated for that. Oh, and the thing was wicked fast. It darted straight up at me and Allyson, thinking it had the element of surprise; luckily, my Speed Sense still seemed to work, and Allyson's reaction time was on point as well.

"_I got it!" _I thought to her. "_Get clear!"_

She veered upwards in a diagonal line, as I shot a huge bolt of lightning into the serpent's mouth. The good news was, as long as I used in responsibly, I had more of an advantage down here in the water than I ever did on solid ground. I could feel the bolt of lightning crackle and fry everything in a straight line, even before the serpent ate it; hell, I probably vaporized millions of bacteria. Once hitting its intended target, the bolt fried the monster from the inside out. The kill was almost instant, but i'd be lying if I said that it didn't convulse and shriek for a couple of seconds. Still, I imagine it was a kinder fate than what his friend got. Grant was regrouping with me and Allyson, and even the rushing water couldn't hide the red inky cloud rising in the distance; not to mention the lingering stuff on his axe and armor.

"_Had fun?" _Allyson asked him. "_Looks like it was one heck of a paintball party."_

"_Tons of fun," _Grant thought back to her. "_By the way, make sure you close your mouths when you slice through anything big; otherwise you'll get a good swallow of monster blood."_

"_Won't that poison you or something?" _I asked him.

"_Nah, my immune system is pretty legit. Anyway, I sense another party just another hundred miles out. There's only thirty piranhaoids, and two neon lights dragons? What? Really tho? Anyway, they're too busy eating what's left of some dead Atlanteans to be of any real threat. As long as we strike hard and fast, we can get past them with no problem."_

"_Cool. What about Janus' body?"_

"_It's back at the base of the mountain, I got a lock on it."_

I was satisfied with that answer; no need to slow down now. Still, Allyson flew back to the mountain, and straight down. Grant and I gave each other a worried look, and flew after her.

We found her a good ten feet away from Janus' body, and man was it rougher on the heartstrings in person. The holes were protruding with blood, guts, and bile, oozing from it like sweat. His body was mangled, almost unrecognizable. Hell, his skin looked more black than blue; a parting gift from Attuma. The worst thing though, was his head. His eyes were open, and even though they were already white, they looked hollower than a log. Krang's arrow in his head was just icing on the crap cupcake. I couldn't see Allyson's face, but her hands were covering her mouth, her breathing was unusually calm and tight. She created two small hand constructs, flew them over to Janus' eyes, and closed them shut. Then she took the arrow out of his head, and the trident necklace he had around his neck, before washing Janus with a wave of golden fire. I almost stopped her, but then I realized that this was the best case scenario. It was a decent send off for Janus, plus she had something to give the Atlanteans as condolences for his death. Allyson tied the arrow to the necklace, put it around her neck, and stuffed it in her armor. Her hands were clenched, and I could practically see the rage and grief making her shake. What was it with her? Why did she care so much? Sure, this guy deserved better. Bad things happen to good people, but how could she take it so personal? She didn't even know the guy.

"_You said Krang did this to him?" _Allyson asked me, her voice echoing with dry anger. "_Some guy_ _dressed in golden armor?"_

"_Yeah," _I tentatively thought to her.

She turned around, and faced me and Grant.

"_He's mine," _she thought to us, leaving no room for debate. "_If he's not already dead, he's mine."_

"_Okay," _I thought to her, hopping she didn't go supernova on me. "_But first, we gotta get there; Grant?"_

"_I got the lookout," _he quickly thought to us. "_Let's just keep moving."_

We assumed our previous positions, and continued flying.

We only flew for a good ten minutes before Grant brought us to another halt. Allyson and I powered down out of our respective flying forms, and Grant was studying the distance ahead like a map.

"_Yo, Storm-Lord?" _he asked me. "_Your super vision still working?"_

I almost slapped myself in the face; I totally forgot about it. I concentrated on the distance ahead of me, and sure enough, my enhanced vision was still a thing, even at the bottom of the sea. I saw the same area that was in my dream. A valley of wrecked ships among the rocks. The area stretched out about the size of three football fields, and was teeming with piranhaoids. I could see the Roman Sea Dragons (should've corrected Grant on that), circling the area like guard dogs; which was way more than what I could give the piranhaoids. They were scurring around, either chomping on dead Atlantean carcasss, dead shark carcass, or fighting each other for dead Atlantean/shark carcass. There was no structure to their movements, which was more troublesome for us; if there was no system to break down, we might get overwhelmed by the chaos.

"_Yeah," _I thought back to Grant. "_I can see them."_

"_Me too," _Allyson thought to us.

"_What?!" _Grant and I thought to her in disbelief.

Yeah, that sounds slightly sexist, but Allyson's power set didn't include enhanced vision as far as we knew. I turned to her in shock, and-ooooohhhh. I get it now. Remember when Allyson and I were….wrestling? Remember how she suddenly got a burst of strength, highlighted by solar energy coursing through her veins? Well, imagine, the same thing, just with the veins in her head, and around her eyes, lit up with solar energy. She looked slightly uncomfortable, and this was obviously a product of intense concentration. Still, for what it's worth, I could definitely believe her vision was 20/20.

"_Uhh, Sunbird?" _Grant thought to her. "_Why does your face look like a light bulb?"_

Allyson shot him a dirty look.

"_It's a trick I learned last ni- erm….a while ago." _she thought back to him (terrible save). "_It takes a lot of focus, but if I channel the solar energy in my body, make it intensify in certain areas, I can improve my basic abilities."_

"_You found all of that out while you were gettin' busy with Storm-Lord?" _Grant asked her.

"_SHUT UP!" _

"_Focus, guys!" _I thought to both of them. "_We gotta get through this shipyard. Here's the plan. Sunbird, once we get close enough, You fly to the center of the shipyard as fast as you can, give the piranhaoids something to focus on."_

"_You're using me as a decoy?" _Allyson asked me.

"_Sorta. Just attract as many of them as you can, and torch them with a mini-sun; you can still make those don't here, right?"_

She held out her hand, and a basketball sized sun roared to life, boiling the surrounding water to only slightly higher than scalding (I tried hard not to cry out).

"_Seems like it," _she thought back to me.

"_Cool, or hot, I guess." _I responded. "_While you do that, Geo-Titan and I will take out the Roman Sea Dragons."_

"_That's what you call em'?!" _Grant asked me. "_What are you, a mythological oceanographer?"_

"_No, just dreams," _I responded. "_But that sounds fun, maybe I can major in that if I live long enough to go to college. Anyway, you take the one on the left, i'll go for the one on the right. The piranhaoids shouldn't give us too much trouble. After we take the dragons down, assuming Sunbird hasn't torched them all, we'll help with cleanup. Everybody good with the plan?"_

Grant and Allyson nodded.

"_Wait!" _Grant suddenly thought to us (perfect timing). "_I assume this is a stealth plan, so how are we supposed to sneak up on them, with you two basically being living giveaway beacons. Hell, that's the reason Sunbird is first up to bat."_

Putting aside the murder face Allyson was giving Grant (he was coming for her more often than usual), he did have a point.

"_Well," _I started. "_I could swim at super speed, and if Sunbird uses her solar steroids to enhance her legs, she could probably do the same thing."_

"_But we need to be faster than 100mph," _Grant said. "_By the way, Sunbird, that new thing you do, it's Solar Steroids now, that's what we're calling it."_

Again, Allyson looked like she wanted to strangle Grant, but she bit her frustration down.

"_Why don't you just carry us?" _I asked Grant. "_I mean, you can carry us, right?"_

"_You can carry a pillow, right?" _Grant sarcastically thought back to me. "_Yeah, I can carry you two, provided Sunbird's cool with it."_

That had to be like the fourth time he straight up attacked her existence.

"_What?! _He thought to her, trying to stave off her death glare. "_Every time the subject of lifting you comes into play, you get aggressive; like, mother bear level aggressive."_

"_Whatever," _Allyson thought to him, reining herself in again. "_If we have to do that, that's fine. Still, stop being so snippy, Geo-Titan, that's my job."_

"_Girls!" _I thought to them. "_You're both beautiful human beings; now can we get back to business, please?"_

We all laughed a bit (got a good chuckle out of Grant), before getting ready to fly. I got to the right of Grant, and Allyson got on his left. He grabbed us by our sides, we put an arm around his shoulder for support, and Grant took off. The good news was, since I had some small experience with flying, I didn't get whiplash from the takeoff. We soared around the mountains, and through a large expanse of empty ocean for about five minutes, before stopping, and taking cover behind a huge rock just 800 meters away from the enemy camp. We peered over the edge, used our respective enhanced vision, and scoped out the enemy. The layout changed a little bit. The piranhaoids were pretty much done with their dead meat (what an awful thing to say, I hate that I said that), and were starting to get antsy. The dragons were just completing another cycle, so they were still in perfect position to get wrecked.

"_Ready, Sunbird?" _I asked her.

"_Yup, I always wanted to be live bait," _she thought back to me.

"_We're right behind you, Solar Steroids," _Grant thought to her. "_We won't let anything happen to you."_

"_Sweet," _she thought to him. "_But i'm not the one who's gonna need saving."_

She activated her Sun Form, and took off as fast as she could into the fray. Just like I thought, the piranhaoids swam after her, like moths to flame. So much for helping with cleanup; Allyson had them all in the palm of her hand, even before she busted out the mini-sun.

Without talking to each other, I activated my Thunder Form, and flew to my target dragon, while Grant did the same. The dragon was was a bit distracted from the sudden blaze of Allyson's mini-sun, so by the time it spotted me, it was already too late. I wrapped myself in a giant arrow construct, and flew straight through it's neck. To be honest, I actually felt bad about it. Sure this thing might be a vicious predator, but it was so beautiful; probably even tameable. I have a soft spot for animals, and while I held no guilt for killing the piranhaoids, I wished I didn't have to be enemies with these beautiful dragons. Hell, when Grant killed his, via throwing his Geo-Force charged axe at it, exploding it into burger chunks, I actually felt a little sick.

"_Well, that was a nice warm-up," _Allyson thought to me. "_Where to now?"_

"_Just a short 30 miles, give or take, forward." _I thought to her and Grant. "_Then we go straight down the edge of a dark, scary, absolutely terrifying to look at chasm. From there, it's a straight swim to Atlantis; although expect the monster resistance to go up about 90%."_

"_Sounds fun," _Grant thought to me. "_Let's get going."_

We continued flying (i'm pretty sure it was flying. Can you fly underwater?) for another five minutes, before coming to another stop at the chasm. Looking at in person, was absolutely heart stopping. It wasn't as bad as the Nethertrench, which was basically a living blob of evil and malice, but it was still a very close second.

"_Ok, guys," _Grant thought to us. "_It's about thirty miles down to the bottom, or what qualifies for a bottom."_

"_What does that mean?" _Allyson asked him.

"_Plates," _I thought to her. "_The bottom is a collection of plates that just barely hold together. Same as Atlantis, except they use some kind of tech, or maybe magic, to keep the city together."_

"_What he said," _Grant thought to us. "_Also, Storm-Lord, you were right about monster resistance. We gotta swim straight down, with no lights, cuz i'm seeing about 1,000 more piranhaoids and eel men, two more of those sea serpents, glow in the dark dragons, and four….Storm-Lord, what the hell are those blimp sized monster fish?_

"_Antarctic Leviathans," _I thought to him. "_Yeah, we need to take those things out first."_

"_Hold up," _Allyson thought to us. "_If this set up is as bad as you guys say it is, why don't we just fly over it?"_

"_There is no 'over it'," _Grant thought to her. "_The blockade literally goes on for miles, and leads right into a brawl happening about a mile away from Atlantis' borders. If we fly over this one, we'll just end up in the middle of a bigger fight; even worse, the Atlanteans won't know we're the good guys."_

"_Good point," _I thought to him and Allyson. "_Besides, we might as well take out the stragglers; better than leaving potential reinforcements alive."_

"_Alright," _Allyson thought to me and Grant, after thinking on it. "_Sounds reasonable enough."_

"_We're gonna have to go stealth again," _Grant thought to us. "_You guys ready?"_

Allyson and I assumed our positions, grabbed on to Grant, and were rocketing down the scary trench of doom in no time.

On the bright side, the further we went down, the more my eyes adjusted to the darkness (again, thank God my body was adapting to the pressure too). By the time we hit the kinda sorta bottom, I still saw the environment in a dark hazy blue light. Grant didn't stop, and after taking a sharp 90 degree turn forward, we torpedoed through the water. Thanks to Grant's crazy flying speed (just over Mach 1), we were within a mile away from the monster swarm, after which I ordered him to bring us to a halt. I took a quick nanosec to study the layout of the blockade. As far as I could see, while there wasn't any semblance of organization, most of the small fries were scurrying around in one place, so at least we'd get a decent chunk of kills in the first few seconds. I couldn't see any of the sea serpents (must've been hovering low), but the dragons were as clear as day. Also, even though you'd have to be blind to miss them, I was only spotting two Antarctic Leviathans.

"_Geo-Titan?_" I asked Grant. "_Where are the others?"_

"_Swimming low," _he thought back to me. "_Either these things are hunters, or have really good trainers. This is an obvious trap. They expect a head on attack; the remaining Serpents and Leviathans are ready to take us by surprise."_

"_So we need to draw them out," _Allyson thought to us.

"_Exactly," _I thought back to her. "_Ok, here's what we do. Sunbird-"_

A flash of golden fire erupted in the middle of the enemy's set up, burning maybe a good 50 piranhaoids/eel men, before taking the form of a huge mini-sun (I could feel the heat even from a mile away. Allyson held it up for a good ten seconds, occasionally making solar flares radiate off of it, killing the remainder of the piranhaoids and eel men. Still, that was just the beginning. Apparently, big sea monsters love big shiny things, cuz out of the depths of even this deep in the ocean, I could see the hidden Leviathans and Serpents rising up. As soon as they were within distance, Allyson literally split her sun into to smaller ones, and shot them down the maws of those oversized piranha, trout, shark things. She snapped her fingers, and they exploded into red fish paste (seriously, it was like a tomato juice factory just exploded). Allyson, Grant, and I rushed forward, now only having to deal with six more sea monsters.

"_I got the serpents!" _she thought to us. "_You guys get the rest!"_

"_Sunbird, you are so badass!" _Grant screamed in her head.

"_I know!"_

I took the left, while Grant went right. Taking out the dragon was easy. All it took was one huge blast of lightning, and it was down for the count. The Leviathan however, was a bit more resilient. I tried shooting in in the mouth with another lightning blast, but I only succeeded in making his gums bleed. He was hurt sure, but now he was pissed. He locked onto me with those beady black eyes, and made a wild lunge at me, and pretty much 90% of the space I was occupying. Instead of flying away from it, I did something stupid (like,Grant level stupid), and flew straight into his mouth. I tapped into Speed Mode (yeah, I could still do that while flying), and started to build up power. I used my fear, and desperation as motivation. I was inside of something! I did not wanna be digested! The power built up in me so fast, even I was taken off guard. Still, I didn't try to control it, I just let it go! I didn't know what this thing looked like from the outside, but I imagine he was seriously wishing he was anybody else. Lightning exploded from my body, big enough to cut water towers in half. I screamed as the power continued to leave me, not letting up for a single second. It took maybe a good 7 seconds to kill the beast, and boy was it not pretty. I could see my lightning blastwave put holes through its hide, and i'm pretty sure I heard ribs being broken in half. I didn't exactly blow it to chunks, but by the time I was done, along with the holes peppered along the Leviathan's body, there was no way this thing could be alive; his innards were way too f*(#$ up. I swam through one of the holes I put in it, and surveyed my handy work. Yup, missing eyeballs, oozing blood, monster floating lifelessly in the ocean; he was so dead. I regrouped with Grant and Allyson, shortly afterwards.

"_Took you long enough," _Grant thought to me.

"_Like you did any better?" _I snapped at him.

"_I one-shot my monster, and that was me just half assing it."_

"_Humph."_

"_Yup. Anyway, we got another battle just a mile out."_

"_How do we convince the Atlanteans we're on their side?" _Allyson asked me.

"_We make a good first impression," _I thought back to her. "_Kill as many monsters as you can, help out the good guys, hope for the best."_

"_Works for me," _Grant thought to us. "_Let's go!"_

There was no more use for stealth anymore, and we just hightailed it to the battle.. It took us less than 4 seconds to get in the fray, and like I said, we made a big splash (no pun intended). Grant engulfed his body in G-Force, summoned his axe, and flew around frantically, chopping any non Atlantean to bits. Allyson created multiple Sun Swords, and willed them to fly into about 30 piranhaoid heads. As for me, I created a ball of electricity in my hands, broke it up into paper clip sized arrowhead constructs, and flung them into the water, willing them to fly through another 50 monster heads. The look on the Atlanteans' face was priceless. These guys (and girls), were decked out in battle gear, and fighting their asses off, just to get shown up by some mystery teenage super team. Hell, you could see the look of mistrust and disbelief on their faces. Still, my team and I came to play, and boy did we rip these f*(#%$ a new $$#^!$! I couldn't see Grant or Allyson too much during the fight, but I did catch some glimpses of them blasting monsters away with their powers, or slicing them to bits with their weapons. As for me, well….I got by. Again, using electricity underwater can be a huge advantage for fighting your enemies, but if you have too many allies around, who will get affected by the lightning just the same, you lose your advantage. Still, I had my Storm Sword (yeah, i'm using the name), and that was good enough. I tapped into Speed Mode, and started swimming and slashing like a warrior Michael Phelps. I can't say that I was the most graceful thing in the sea, but I was getting the job done. Eel Men and Piranhaoids swam up to me, only to end up missing heads, arms, and other essential body parts. I slashed and hacked my way through dozens of them, occasionally grabbing them by the throat, and going all Raiden on them. To be honest, I was actually enjoying myself. Sure, I was killing living things, but they weren't people (horrible way to think about it), just disgusting creatures of the sea (God, I am a horrible human being). Anyway, the starstruck Atlanteans quickly got over their disbelief. Either because we had proved our worth, or they were so damn desperate to hold on (probably the latter), the Atlanteans re entered the fight, and resumed killing everything that wasn't us. In other words, they knew we were on their side. One of em' in particular, a big bulky guy with a long black cape, a crew cut, and golden finned helmet (imagine Thor's helmet, it it had fish fins in place of the wings), barreled straight into battle next to me. He fought kinda like Grant, a controlled brutish rush; like a bull who learned how to strategize, or a super smart gorilla. He mostly fought with his hands (he was wearing golden spike gauntlets), but occasionally busted out his trident,and began harpooning monsters by the dozens. Over the course of the battle, we ended up fighting back to back, as the piranhaoids and eel men started to surround us. Fun fact, the eel men could actually spit voltage from their mouths. Hell, if I hadn't quickly absorbed the electric volley, old mystery man would've been fried. As was such, we teamed up, killed our assailants in a glorious hack n' slash manor, and continued our efforts to save what was left of his army (seriously, these guys were getting their asses handed to them) As we fought, I heard him ask me something; or at least I assumed it was a question. It sounded like pops, clicks, and dolphin sounds. He could've been insulting my hair for all I could understand him. When I didn't respond, he tried again, this time with more biting sounds, pings, and bloop noises. Still couldn't understand what the hell he was trying to say, but now I knew that there were different Atlantean languages.

"English, dude!" I yelled aloud, my voice working surprisingly well underwater.

"Surface dweller!" he yelled back at me, not in a very grateful way. "How dare you interfere! How dare you-"

"I assume that's Atlantean for "thanks for saving our asses"," I interrupted him.

Mystery warrior guy roared, and jammed his trident through two more eel men.

"Tell me, impudent whelp," he continued, while we kept up our fight against the enemy. "Why should I not kill you and your allies right this very moment?"

No matter how many people I fight, no matter how many battles I have to endure, my greatest challenge has, is, and probably will be dealing with people. Seriously, we only exchanged three sentences between each other, and I already f*(#!^% hated this guy! Hell, I almost told him to go and f*(# himself, but I remembered it wasn't just me at stake here. I had my friends to worry about, the overall mission, and yes, the well being of Atlantis and the entire world. As much as I wanted to tell this guy off, as much as I wanted to cut him down to size (figuratively of course), I had to bite down my frustration, and be all diplomatic. It's times like these when I REALLY miss and appreciate Allyson.

"Because," I responded to him, focusing on killing monsters to ebb off the extra anger. "In case you haven't noticed, we're here to help you. We got a tip that Attuma was attacking Atlantis; wanted to come down and provide some assistance."

"Likely story," the warrior (i'll call him Kraken for now) said. "Surface dwellers have no business in Atlantis."

"Well, we're with S.H.I.E.L.D.; handling this kinda stuff is what we do."

"S.H.I.E.L.D.!? NOW I KNOW YOU ARE HERE FOR PERSONAL BENEFIT! YOU COME FOR THE STONE, DON'T YOU?! YOU COME FOR THE HOLY STONE OF THE SEA GOD!"

"PIPE DOWN, OVERKILL! Look, i'm not gonna lie to you! For the past few days, my team and I have been collecting the Stones of Olympus; they've been popping up all over the world like weeds! But we're not the only ones playing scavenger hunt for them. Doctor Doom's set up his own team to get the stones too; he's probably already got his hands on the Stone of Zeus as we speak. Attuma attacking Atlantis, I assume no more than a week ago, him being prepared to absorb the stone's energy? That's not a coincidence. He's gotta be in cahoots with Doom, and if he gets the stone, you can bet your ass Doom will have it on the express. Yeah, we're here to get the stone, or at the least, make sure Doom dosen't get his hands on it. If that means saving Atlantis from getting wrecked, you can count on me and my team for support. So what do you say, big guy? Want some help?"

Kraken went silent for a moment, as we killed some more monsters, while he thought on it. Finally,after a good ten seconds of thinking it over, he gave me his answer.

"WARRIORS!" he bellowed "DEFENDERS OF ATLANTIS! AS OF NOW, THE SURFACE DWELLERS ARE OUR ALLIES; TREAT THEM AS SUCH!

Whew! Maybe i'm better at this whole diplomatic thing than I thought.

"My name is Oroco," he said afterwards. "Do not betray us."

"Storm-Lord," I responded. "Wouldn't dream of it. So what's up with the battle? I mean, how did enemy forces get around Atlantis?"

"The sea is big, and creatures surround Atlantis from all sides. Attuma took advantage of this, and organized the savage creatures into a double sided attack; we were fortunate enough to catch on to his plan before he overwhelmed us. Still, it is a dark day for Atlantis. The throne-"

"Has been taken over by Krang and Byrrah. Llyra's sitting on the throne, controlling all the savage sea life, and and upcoming wave of actual sea demons. I take it you guys are trying to take the palace back?"

"You seem to know a great deal about our enemy's tactics, boy."

"Like I said, I got good info sources. Now, if we're done pointing fingers, let's get serious about killing stuff!"

Ok, that may have come off as a little more ruthless than I meant. Anyway, with our combined efforts (meaning Grant, Allyson, and I did most of the heavy lifting), we pushed through a good chunk of ground pretty quickly. Most of the effort can definitely be attributed to Grant and Allyson, though I put in a decent amount of work. Grant didn't use G-Force blasts or constructs, (his fire/lightning energy could've accidentally killed friendlies), but since he could fly underwater, and because he had an axe, 40% of enemy forces were getting butchered by him alone. The other 40% was all Allyson. Unlike me and Grant, Allyson could use her heavy hitter powers, without being a danger to our allies around her. How'd she do this? By using her hard light blasts and constructs, instead of her golden fire. And when I say she was kicking some serious ass, I mean she was kicking some SERIOUS ASS! Like Grant, she could move gracefully in the water, but one could argue (probably thanks to having her powers for over a year), she moved with more fiese and fluidity. Her combat was just as good. Like I said, since she could use hard light constructs, her overall effectiveness in the water was not hindered at all. Whenever I caught some sparring glimpses at her in action, she was either throwing a knife construct through an enemy soldier, blasting a bullet-like ray of light through and enemy soldier, or getting up close, and gutting them with her Sun Knives (the actual metal ones). Hell, to add insult to injury, she created a school of ten sharks, and without missing a beat with the close quarters combat (seriously, she was controlling ten constructs, and still had enough skill leftover to make piranha/eel sushi wither her swords), willed them to swim back and forth across the battlefield, chomping any poor enemy soul that was in their paths. I didn't get an exact estimate on how much her kill count was, but let's just say the distant water had a slightly reddish tinge to it (before it diluted out that is). Like I said, I pretty much did my part here and there. A good chunk of chopped off heads here, occasional cooked sea food there, but it was no contest; Grant and Allyson were carrying this army on their backs (not to put the Atlanteans down or anything, they fought hard).

As we fought on, our ranks slowly but surely swelled. Attuma's forces were pretty much owning Atlantis', and as we collected more fighters, it was obvious that Atlantis was the underdog by a mile. More and more piranhaoids and eel men were piling up; hell, I actually had to summon my shield, charge it with a small amount of voltage, and use it as a buffer. Thanks to Grant and Allyson, when we hit this huge swell, all the Atlanteans and I had to do, was hold our own, while they bulldozed 80% of the conflict; still it was disheartening to know how far in the hole Atlantis really was. We fought hard on our way to the city, probably clocking in at about and hour of straight combat, before seeing the blue lights of the city limits. Still, that's when $#!+ got really real! See, up until now, we were fighting a series of small skirmishes, collecting as many allies as we could, while simultaneously moving forward. Up until then, the battles were very straightforward; the fight was very condensed and focused. Now, out in this big open space, about a mile below the castle, and just outside Atlantis' city limits? Yeah, this battle was ANYTHING but straightforward. For an entire miles worth, in every conceivable direction a huge battle for the palace. On initial sight, I counted over 500 soldiers (collectively); once getting a full scope estimate, I was almost certain that there was close to (if not more than) 10,000 combatants in this one area alone. As what seemed to be tradition, the Atlanteans were kinda losing this fight. It wasn't a one sided fight, but you could say they held about 40% of the water, while the enemy forces held the remaining 60%.Hell, with all of the extra enemies floating about, I could probably get away with using a bit of my lightning powers.

"_Sunbird, Geo-Titan," _I thought to them. "_It's up to you guys; turn this fight around."_

"_No problem, bro," _Grant thought to me.

"_Yeah," _Sunbird thought to me too. "_We got this."_

"_Still a stupid battle cry."_

"_I know."_

"_Guys?" _I thought to them. "_I can still hear you; shut it."_

Starting out, the battle was a little mixed. Sure, thanks to the extra 2,000 Atlanteans we managed to collect on the way here, the fight took a slight upswing for our side, but we still had a lot of killing to do. I saw even less of Grant and Allyson in this fight; just flashes of light, a few solar constructs here and there, as well multiple (like hundreds) of spears whizzing in every direction. The spears would peg a monster in the chest or head, and either stop, and change direction, or keep flying straight into another target. Also, and this is me just nitpicking here, but why were those spears…..multi colored? Seriously, I was picking up gold, bronze, silver, and small flecks of different colored metals, I guess. Again, not a big deal, but if this was Grant's doing (it was totally Grant's doing), then what the hell did he spend his night doing? Anyway, it was just another rinse and repeat. Grant and Allyon got to be full fledged badasses (understatement), while I was kind of a junior badass. Again, I had a bit more leg room to work with, but outside of a few instances where I killed a good 300 monsters with controlled area lightning blasts, I was stuck with my sword and shield. Hell, I was so out of my element (literally) in this fight, my Speed Sense was going off every other ten seconds. Seriously, without the electrons in the air, I was virtually blind down here. Still, for what it was worth, I did ok.

We fought for a good thirty minutes (somehow Oroco and I managed to stay together the entire time), before something actually interesting happened. Oh, fighting for my life, and the fate of an entire nation was thrilling enough, but this just cranked the dial up to 11. Suddenly, piranhaoids and eel men were getting stabbed, gutted, even blown apart by the dozens. And I don't mean that in a gradual sense; dozens of monsters, even if they were far apart, were being killed simultaneously, every second. Hell, with Grant and Allyson still doing their thing, the eel men and piranhaoids had to fall back to the palace (they must've really had that place on lock if that was their campsite). A second later, the water next to me shimmered (freaking me the hell out), and I summoned my shield while backtracking. As it turns out, that was highly unnecessary, as the invisible woman (no, not the from the Fantastic Four) showed herself. She was basically what you'd imagine from another female Atlantean, but with a few noticeable differences. Blue skin, pupiless white eyes, tattoos snaking all over her body, strong arms and legs; all typical Atlantean traits. In addition to that, she had all white hair, elf ears, and had wings on her heels, just like Namor. She was wearing green full body battle armor, and was toting a golden trident (seriously, if I snuck one of them out as a souvenir, would anybody miss any of these things?). Usually, she'd be the kinda hero that might be vaguely familiar, but forgettable to me. Thanks to my enhanced brain, all of my memories as clear as if it happened a minute ago; I knew exactly who this was.

"Namorita!" Oroco shouted, damn near impaling himself on his own trident, trying to get down to a knee. "Your presence is most welcome, my liege!"

"Rise, Oroco," she said to him, not taking her eyes off of me. "Explain to me why we this surface dweller fights among us."

Oroco quickly rose to a standing position (we were in water, so we couldn't really stand on anything), and started talking quickly.

"He calls himself Storm-Lord," Oroco said. "He and his comrades apparently come to aid Atlantis against Attuma's onslaught. While their motives are not entirely altruistic, they are mighty warriors, and have proven themselves to be worthy of an at least temporary partnership."

Namorita's eyes were practically boring into my head. Because of her pupil less eyes, I had a hard time judging exactly what her overall verdict was, but her crossed arms were not exactly a sign of optimism. After five seconds of sizing me up, Namorita looked up, and shouted really loud in Atlantean. Couldn't understand what she was saying (probably could take it up as a second language), but due to the Atlantean army falling back, apparently going to the city, I guess it was a call to retreat and regroup. She looked back at me, still unrelentingly cynical to my presence.

"For now," she started. "We are in no position to refuse your help; do not mistake that for goodwill. Follow us."

She turned around, and started swimming after her soldiers. Hell, her cold shoulder was so bad, even Oroco gave me a kinda sorta sympathetic look.

"_Storm-Lord," _Allyson thought to me. "_What's happening?"_

"_Looks like we're regrouping," _I thought back to her. "_Probably to strategize our next move."_

"_Was that Namorita?" _Grant asked me. "_Thought she was dead."_

"_You know how many heroes "die", but come back?" _I asked him, as I started following the swimming soldiers. "_Still, don't bring that up; she's not exactly ecstatic about help from surface dwellers. Also, do not ask for her autograph until we've finished the job."_

"_I wasn't gonna!"_

"_Yeah you were." _Allyson and I thought to him.

We followed the soldiers inside the city (it was cooler in person), and after swimming about a mile or so through it, entered a greek temple-like building, elaborately decorated with glowing corals and trident holding statutes, the size of the Coliseum. Inside, was either the most bizarre thing ever, or right up the alley of an underwater nation. Aside from the hundreds of Atlantean soldiers shuffling around, exchanging weapons, and getting orders from various commanders (not to mention the giant sharks swimming close to the ceiling), this place was technologically legit. Seriously, I was seeing holographic touch screens, real time battle mimicry simulations, even a few working teleporters. As Namorita swam through the crowd, to the center of the temple, which had its own amphitheater, the soldiers stood at attention and shouted something in Atlantean; probably something along the lines of: WE LIVE TO KISS YOUR BACKSIDE! Namorita pounded her trident on the floor, creating a light wave that rippled across the floor, and the soldiers resumed their duties. She beckoned me, Grant, Allyson, and Oroco to the center of the amphitheater, where a huge map was lying, or should I say a part of the floor. I'll give credit where credit is due; this map was the $#!+. If any of you have every seen the third Narnia movie (wasn't bad, wasn't great), the map on this floor, operated the same way the way Corikan's map did. I was seeing shockingly realistic miniature soldiers doing battle in what was definitely a huge expanse of land and sea. Granted, most of it was incoherent mess, but one thing was painfully clear; Atlantis was losing big time. Attuma's forces were overwhelming Namor's by almost half. The crescent was so big, it was practically circling Namor's army. The sea creatures (mostly sharks, swordfish, octopi, and Sea Dogs), the ones that were still alive, were getting mauled by piranhaoids, Serpents, Dragons, and even Leviathans. There were some blue lasers flying from Atlantis' armored wall, but the only things they were effective at killing, were the Serpents were way too slender, and the Leviathans just shrugged the blasts off. The real show however, was Namor's battle with Attuma. Agaim, it was nothing short of a clash of gods, but after over 6 hours of constant battle (props on the effort), it was obvious Namor was a bit on the losing end. For starters, while Namor's power wasn't exactly draining, Attuma's power just kept rising; the guy was absorbing energy just by being near the stone. Also, while Namor was definitely putting up a good fight, Attuma was getting more, and harder hits in; not to mention the blasts, and water constructs he was pouring on. By my estimate, Namor probably had another hour in him at best, before Attuma took the W.

"He's losing," I said aloud.

"HOLD YOUR TONGUE, SURFACE DWELLER!" Oroco bellowed at me. "DO NOT DARE SPEAK WORDS OF MISFORTUNE AGAINST OU-"

"Enough, Oroco!" Namorita interrupted him. "He is right. Somehow, Attuma is siphoning the power of the stone; Namor engaging in close combat with him has only increased the process."

"It's Llyra," I spoke up again, earning some surprised looks from Namorita and Oroco. "She's using some kind of magic to transfer the stone's energy to Attuma's armor; I mean, you guys probably don't know what Tron is, so I doubt his armor is glowing for aesthetic purposes."

"How do you-" Namorita started.

"Dreams," Grant, Allyson and I stopped her.

Namorita looked a bit flustered, but managed to hide it pretty well.

"Alright," she cautiously continued. "As you can see, we are desperate to reclaim the palace. We had no idea how so many savage sea creatures could be coordinated into fighting formations; now we know."

"So why not try another assault?" Allyson asked her. "With the three of us fighting you, we could get through their defenses."

"Why don't you just blow up the whole palace? Grant asked Namorita. "Problem solved."

Namorita and Oroco looked like he just threatened to kill their grandmothers.

"I cannot even begin to describe how ignorant, and downright insulting your common surface world suggestion was." Namorita started, her words like bullet out of a machine gun. "The palace, the throne of Atlantis, is the crown jewel of our city. Every since its creation, it has endured countless wars, trials, and tribulations. If it was ever to be destroyed, the people of Atlantis would lose all hope, their morality and spirits would be irreparably crushed; even now, they begin to despair we will never reclaim it. On another note, the palace has a magnetic core that keeps the rock it's on in one piece. If it is ruptured, the explosion would level everything within a thousand mile radius."

Yikes. Guess blowing up the palace (I wasn't on board with that anyway) was out of the question.

"Ok then," I said. "Well, is there a way to take back the throne in a more tactical way?"

"Not without taking more soldiers from the battlefield," Namorita responded. "Thanks to your earlier efforts, we can scrape together one last, albeit sub-par, assault force."

"I can help," Allyson spoke up.

Based off of the looks she was getting from Oroco and Namorita, the vote of confidence wasn't all that high.

"What?" she asked us all. "You don't think I can hold my own?"

"That is not what I am trying to convey," Oroco said. "You are a strong warrior, but alone-"

"She still kicks ass." Grant interrupted him. "Trust me, dude, if Sunbird's on your team, you're in good hands."

"I doubt she can defeat Krang or Byrrah in combat."

"Wanna bet?" Allyson asked him.

"Moving on," Namorita stopped the potential feud. "Our biggest problem with another full assault, is that Krang has now has control of the palace defenses. Even if we manage to repel his forces again, the turrets and mines will lay waste to whatever is left of our assault."

"Don't you have a backdoor of sorts," Allyson asked her. "I mean, I can see you guys are a proud race, but you must have been smart enough to have a palace escape route."

"As a matter of fact, we do."

Namorita waved her hand over the map, and the image went from an overhead battle survey, to a close up of Atlantis'' palace. She waved her hand again, and green highlights flashed in four places in the rock foundation.

"These are actually deploy vents," Namorita started. "We use them for shift changes in the royal palace guard, but they can function as escape routes if necessary."

"Then why not enter through those?" I asked her.

"As I said, Krang has taken control of the palace defense grid. These points will not open for us, and even if they could, we'd find ourselves swimming into a thousand piranhaoid claws."

In theory, I should've prepared for, if not thought of this myself. Seriously, I had just enough time to see the quizzical look on Grant's face, followed by a snap of his fingers, before the image on the map had four green explosions billowing out of its entrance points. Namorita and Oroco acted in the exact manner you'd think they would; pure unchecked confusion, followed by death glares at Grant.

"Wait!" Grant started. "First off, I could kick all of your butts within a half of a millisecond. Second, I analyzed the palace's structure, and took account of the magnetic core before blowing apart the entrances. Plus, that thousand monster set up you were talking about? Trashed em'."

"Krang will still have a secondary force set up." Namorita retorted (and I thought I was skeptical).

"Do you have enough soldiers to put up a fight?"

"Barely."

"With Sunbird, you're golden; pun not intended. I'd take advantage of this while it's fresh."

Namorita thought on it for a second (so slow), before nodding her head in agreement, and calling her forces to arms.

"We still need to reclaim the battlefield," Namorita said, as she got her weapons ready.

"I can handle that," Grant said.

"Me too," I spoke up.

"What?!" Namorita and Oroco almost shrieked.

"You're getting devoured by a crescent formation," I started. "You need to focus your efforts of reclaiming the outside advantage, while simultaneously pushing your central forces forward."

"I can do that," Grant said. "How? I'll explain later; all you need to know is that I learned how to singlehandedly repel and army last night."

"Okaay. Cool. Anyway, we also need to get those sea monsters off of our backs. While Geo-Titan is helping you get a foundation back, i'll snipe the enemy sea creatures out of the water, while someone coordinates the troops in formation."

"Oroco will do that," Namorita quickly said, obviously antsy to get back to the battle.

"But," he started. "I am-"

"Promoted to Supreme Commander. I trust you, Oroco; go and save Atlantis."

Oroco looked like his head was gonna explode. He pounded his chest, stood at attention, and after a faint blue glow engulfed him for a quick second, took a knee to Namorita.

"I swear, my liege," he spoke up. "I will not rest until the enemies of Atlantis are broken mangled corpses beneath my boot!"

"Rise, Oroco," Namorita said.

Oroco stood straight up, and motioned for me and Grant to follow him.

"To the teleporter!" he shouted. "We have no time to waste!"

He didn't give us much of a choice, and I swam off with him and Grant; not even getting a chance to look at Allyson.

"_Good luck, you guys!" _she thought to us. "_And don't worry about me, i'll be fine!"_

"_It's Krang who should be worried," _Grant thought to her. "_Kick his ass something fierce Sunbird!"_

With those parting words of encouragement, Grant and I stepped onto the teleporter with Oroco, and dematerialized in a ray of light.


	18. Chapter 18: Home Wrecking

**Chapter 18: Home Wrecking**

(Allyson's Perspective)

I wanted to give them a hug, especially Grant. No, not because I liked him! No, I just really wanted to give him and Jason a hug for luck. I mean, they were about to try and change the course of an entire war all on their own. Well, them, Oroco, an army of like a million water breathing soldiers, and some sharks, I think. Besides, I could still sense, yes sense, Grant's emotional turmoil. Ever since I found out I could induce certain emotions in people's brains, and especially after I went Super Sunbird for the first time, i've been able to literally sense other people's emotions; kinda like a sixth sense. It wasn't perfect, and I didn't exactly know how it worked, but every time I focused on Grant, Jason, or any one person, I got like a thermometer reading of what they were feeling. In Grant's case, the guy was an emotional mess. I don't mean that in the sense that he was just extremely emo, I mean he was a literal emotional mess. His emotional aura was kinda burnt out, like someone had stretched it to its maximum, and snapped it in half. Aside from the occasional fluxes in emotional activity, when he was engaged in battle, he was quite literally emotionally stunted. I made a quick note to help him as soon as we were done with the mission; my songs could heal more than just physical damage. Anyway, Namorita gathered about 100 soldiers, organized them into a platoon, and motioned me to stand next to her. She positioned her fingers into a strange claw-like gesture, and hundreds of blue energy tendrils shot out of them like missiles. One of those tendrils found its way to my forehead, and the feeling was just a little under the pain of when Colonel Fury linked Jason's, Grant's, and my mind for the first time.

"_Soldiers!" _Namorita's voice echoed through my head. "_Sound off!"_

"_HAROOO! HAROOO!" _a tidal wave of voices rolled into my head.

"_OUR MISSION IS SIMPLE! KILL THE TRAITORS! RESTORE THE HONOR OF ATLANTIS! ON ME!"_

A collective roar of righteous courage rolled over my head; all I could think of was how much of a migraine i'd end up having in the morning. Namorita swam like a torpedo out of the temple, leaving me and the soldiers to follow.

"_Wanna warn a girl next time?" _I asked Namorita as we neared the palace. "_It'd be polite."_

"_Be silent, surface dweller," _she thought back to me. "_I have no time for your vanity. As of now, you are a soldier, and will be treated as such."_

I could think of a five letter word i'd like to call her.

"_Whatever," _I thought back to her. "_Just instruct your soldiers to stay back once the monsters come spilling out, I don't need them in the way."_

"_I do not take orders from children!" _she roared back at me.

"_Fine. Pretty please instruct your soldiers to stay back, I need some leg room to do my thing."_

Before Namorita could protest, the much anticipated action started to pick up. Using my Solar Steroids, don't tell Grant, but that was actually pretty funny, I was able to enhance my vision and pick up at least 100 piranhaoids coming out of each of the palace escape tunnels. No time for permission, I cranked up the speed, and shot ahead of the group.

"_WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GIRL?!" _Namorita roared in my head.

"_YOU'LL THANK ME LATER!" _I responded.

I created a bow and arrow construct, and after charging it with a decent amount of light, shot it in a cheesy anime sorta way. The arrow was traveling way faster than those monsters heads could react, and as I went into Comet Speed, things only got worse for them. I locked onto their individual heat signatures, yup, all 500 of them, and split my one arrow into that exact number. With their heat signatures locked on, the arrows delivered them quick, and hopefully painless death bows. Call me crazy, and i'm pretty sure i'm the only one who feels this way, but I wasn't exactly having fun with this whole monster killing thing. Heck, the word monster is kinda unfair. These weren't monsters, they were animals trained to be weapons of war. This may sound a bit hypocritical, since I basically wanted Krang's head on a platter, but that was a whole other story all together. To me, Krang represented those who took sadistic pleasure in the torture of others. Like when I was eight years old, and came upon the Shelton Brothers, hate those guys, kicking an injured possum, just for the fun of it. I rushed to help the poor thing, and even though I got a few good hits to the face for my troubles, two years of prior Kung-Fu training proved too much for them to handle. Still, I was too late; the possum was dead. That was pretty much the defining point of not just my revulsion at the idea of killing, but bullying too. It wasn't right to hurt something simply because it was defenseless, or weaker than you. Sure, sometimes war merits more aggressive means of dealing with enemies, but Janus' death, by the way Jason described it, was just Krang having his fun. I couldn't save that possum,, and even though I had the power to heal people, to help them, lately my power was only being used to punch people really hard. Again, the irony of my solution for someone else's senseless violence, with even more, albeit less senseless violence, was not lost on me. Still, I needed to show Krang that what goes around will sometimes come back around sooner than you think. So many bad people do such evil things to good people, without paying for it. Not today. For Janus, and all the Atlanteans that died because of Krang and Attuma's greed, justice would be done. But enough of my soapbox speech. After I dispatched of the piranhaoids, Namorita swam over to my side.

"Impressive," she said aloud. "Perhaps you are worthy of the esteem your teammates hold you to."

"Thanks," I said back to her, glad it was too cold to be able to blush down here. "What's our next move?"

"_Soldiers!" _she howled through her telepathy. "_Divide into four platoons, and stand guard 100 meters away from a deployment tunnel. Nothing else will be required until I expressly command it!"_

This time, I was ready for the Spartan battle cry, so it was just like getting hit in the head with a tractor, rather than the whole barn.

"Follow me," Namorita said. "And turn of that damn glow, you'll give us away."

"I really miss when people ask for things nicely." I muttered, before swimming after her.

We swam to one of the deployment vents, and Namorita did something with her mouth that I assume was a type of sonar. She basically inhaled deeply, exhaled with a loud pop, and inhaled again. She did that five times, before stopping.

"We can swim to the dive chamber undisturbed," she said. "However, the palace is still infested with piranhaoids. They're spread out, and seem to be on patrol; we'll use that to our advantage. Do you know how to kill stealthily?"

"I can improvise," I responded. "Can't be too hard, right?"

"Hopefully not. The soldiers will wait until we have cleared the way for them, then it's straight to the throne room. Krang has assembled a massive number of piranhaoids, and he and Byrrah are powered by the stone of Poseidon. They are not invincible, but with the power of the sea to back them, they will be hard to defeat."

"My team and I have already defeated two enemies powered by the stones of Ares and Hades. Our track record speaks for itself."

"Hmmm. Then let us begin."

Without my Sun Form, the swim up to the diving chamber wasn't as hard for me as you'd think it be. First off, yes, I actually KNEW how to swim. Second, I just took Grant's advice, and use my Solar Steroids to power my arms and legs. I wasn't just keeping up with Namorita, i'm pretty sure I could've given her a run for her money. It was only a good 30 second swim until we reached the dive chamber, which makes little sense to call it that, given the fact that this whole place always had water in it. Besides, this place was more like an armory than a transition point. Swords, tridents, knives, nets, and laser cannons, freaking laser cannons, decorated the walls. Namorita grabbed one of the cannons, twisted some kind of knob it had by its trigger, and the cannon shrank down to the size of an average gun. She strapped it to the side of her leg, grabbed a few knives, and stuck them in various armor sheaths, including the sides of her thighs, and her biceps. Someone knew how to accessorize for a job.

"Aren't you going to prepare, girl?" she asked me.

"I have weapons of my own," I responded. "Besides, i've got way more firepower in me than this entire room. Also, stop calling me girl. My name is Sunbird."

"As you wish."

Her eyes squinted ever so slightly, and a cascade of images flooded into my brain. First off, this palace must've been using some kind of magic, because as the entire layout of the building was poured into my brain, it was obvious that there was way more room on the inside than the outside architecture would merit. Long elaborate corridors, lit with golden lights, snaked in every way through the palace. I caught glimpses of a ballroom, the throne room, observation decks, training areas, sentry towers, the kitchen, and tons of guest rooms. Obviously that was not what I was supposed to be focused on, but it was still a very nice looking palace. The thing, or things, that Namorita wanted me to see were the piranhaoids swimming about. Like she said, there was a massive buildup of them in the throne room, along with Krang, Byrrah, and Llyra, but there were still at least a good hundred or so swimming around the palace; almost like guard dogs. Namorita's sonar wave thing was still resonating through the water, and thanks to our shared connection, I was seeing everything she was. Well, seeing is a loose term. It was more like sensing; the same way you can sense a wall in front of you, even if you aren't looking or touching it. The point is, I knew where all of the enemies were, so it would be easier to take them down.

"I will take west wing," Namorita said. "You take the east. Try not to die, Sunbird, Atlantis needs all the help it can get."

I was really tempted to make a remark on how I wasn't just some tool, but since this was as close to sincerity as I got from her, I let Namorita off. We swam up to the entrance, which was more or less a huge ramp upward, until we reached the doors that led into the lower palace. I summoned one of my throwing daggers, and charged it with a bit of light. Namorita's sonar indicated that there were ten piranhaoids on either side of the door.

"_Remember," _he thought to me. "_Fast, and quiet."_

"_Okie dokie," _I responded, before we burst out of the door.

Since I had the east wing, I took the ones to the right, while Namorita took the one to the left. I tapped into Comet Speed, and threw my knife outward. I was still pumping Solar Steroids into my arms, and with the charge of solar energy in the knife, it was still like throwing itt through air. The knife sailed through five piranhaoid heads, and I swam ahead, not bothering to check on Namorita. Ok, I lied. I turned around for a brief second, just to make sure she was ok. Yeah, three piranhaoids were missing heads, one was almost cut in half and the last one had a knife lodged in its throat. Heck, Namorita was swimming off, and she didn't look back for a second. I chose to believe that it was because she assumed I was competent enough; not because she couldn't care less.

I gotta say, even though I didn't particularly enjoy it, I might have a future in assassination. With the sonar map in my head, even though this was a pretty big place, I was able to move fast, but not have to look over my shoulder and/or be in a panic that I could get caught at any moment. Huh, then scratch my first sentence then; this wasn't skill, I was cheating. But yeah, this sonar map was life. For example, after my first batch of kills, it wasn't until I swam about 200 meters down, and took three right turns down some really long corridors, until I sensed another piranhaoid just around the next turn. I summoned one of my Solar Sabers, love that name, and once the piranhaoid swam around the corner, I stabbed it in the chest, and for good measure, brought the blade up until I cut its head in half vertically. I swam down a few more corridors took a few turns, and came upon another batch of piranhaoids swimming up a spiral staircase. Speaking of which, the heck is a spiral staircase doing in an underwater mansion? Anyway, I hid behind a wall, and waited. I couldn't wait for them to come one by one, that would end badly in multiple ways. I was considering creating a quick mini-sun to pull them in, and fry them all at once. Still, that would probably be way too loud, and would most likely cause damage to the palace; considering Atlantis' base level treatment of us, this was easily on the top ten things not to do. Then again, Grant blew four holes in their infrastructure so…...no, no, no, no excuse. As the piranhaoids got closer, I finally settled on an idea. I waited until the head one was almost to the edge of the staircase, activated my Sun Form, and…..well, let's just say I can never blame Jason for being overly violent every again. I went into Comet Speed, summoned my swords, and in less than a second, decapitated all seven piranhaoids before I landed at the base of the staircase. Heck, their heads didn't even float away until my perception slowed down. I swam back up to the balcony, and moved on to the next set of targets. It took me maybe less than five minutes to finish off the rest of the piranhaoids. Most of the kills were pretty stealthy. A few knifes in the backs here, a few bullet-like rays of light through the head there. Once, I actually turned seven of the unfortunate souls into paste, by creating a spiked garbage compactor, and smashing them together. Like I said, I had absolutely no room to judge Jason anymore….or at least for the next week. In any case, a few well executed assassinations, a couple clumsy kills, a whole lotta constructs later, and the east wing was secure.

"_All done over here, Namorita," _I thought to her.

"_Took you long enough," _she responded.

"_What?"_

"_I have been in position for almost an entire minute now. If you were any slower we'd have lost the battle already."_

Stay cool, Ally. She's being hyperbolic. She's just a bit on edge. Her head is just fine where it is; don't kick it off. As you can imagine, Namorita and I had an almost seamless working relationship.

"_Well, excuse me," _I thought back to her, trying to keep my speech as venomless as possible. "_I don't exactly have experience with stopping coups."_

"_How is that possible?" _she asked me. "_You wear the emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D.; espionage, assassination, and tactical assault missions should be in your list of skills."_

"_Yeah, about that…..i'm kinda sorta just a temporary intern. My friends and I have only been at this for less than a week._

A period of silence. I could almost hear the facepalm she must have been giving me.

"_Just make your way back to the to the throne room," _she thought to me as curtly as she could. "_Await around the corner. Once the soldiers have assembled, we take the throne room back with no mercy."_

"_Yippie," _I sarcastically thought back to her.

Secretly though, my anticipation was probably on her level, if not higher. I was mostly keeping myself in check, couldn't fight on pure anger, but I was more than impatient to get my hands on Krang. I swam to the area where Namorita instructed me to be, and waited. It took maybe two minutes for the remaining Atlantean soldiers to get in position; dang, those guys swam fast. I didn't see all of them, just the 25 soldiers that were in position near me. Similar to the throne room in Olympus, Atlantis' throne room was big enough to host at least three block parties. In other words, it took a while for the set up to get ready. Once we were ready, but before Namorita could give the order to attack, someone's voice echoed from the throne room.

"NAMORITA!" a silky/rough voice echoed through the water. "I KNOW YOU ARE THERE! I KNOW YOU HAVE DISPATCHED THE DREGS OF MY FORCES! YOUR EFFORT IS COMMENDABLE, YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH OF A WARRIOR WISELY TEMPERED WITH THE CUNNING OF A LEADER! LET ME OFFER YOU-"

Yeah, you probably get the gist. Blah, blah, blah, join me or die. More blah, blah, join the winning team. Even more blah, blah, rule at our side.

"_He talks too much," _Namorita thought to me, completely tuning him out.

"_Understatement," _I thought back to her. "_By the way, I get first crack at him; personal reasons. But if you want to skip the monologue, I can help you there."_

"_Please do. I will be eternally grateful."_

She said please! There was hope for her after all!

I clenched my hands together, and made a mini-sun about the size of a bottle cap. I kept feeding it energy for a good three seconds, while still keeping it in its compressed size. Finally, when it had the explosive power of an exploding oil truck, I willed it to fly into the throne room, and explode. I patched the entrance with a wall of solar energy to keep any excess damage from leaking out. After the boom was done, Namorita yelled "ATTACK!", and 100 warriors, plus me, swarmed into the throne room.

The first thing I noticed was the bodies. Of the 100 piranhaoids that were supposed to be in the defending set up, half of them were just broiled red chunks swirling about in the water. The rest of them were charging at me and the rest of the group, but they were about as important as a speck of dirt on a beach. No, I immediately zeroed in on Krang, and made a beeline for him. A few piranhaoids got in my way, but they were just one swing of a Mega Sun Sword. Still, it looked like I wasn't the only one who had a bone to pick with the jerk. About twenty or so Atlanteans were backing me up, which was kinda endearing in a way. Still, I got first crack at golden boy…..and promptly almost got impaled within the first five seconds. No, seriously, that's not hyperbole. I created a Mega Sun Fist and took a straight swing at him, only for him to dodge with a straight jump upwards, and launch a volley of missiles from his armor. On a side note, why does everyone wanna be a rip-off Iron Man? Anyway, those missiles were fast; even for me. I barely had a chance to raise a shield construct in front of me before impact, and even then I almost got blown away. I definitely remember an explosion of blue, so more likely than not, Krang's armor was also being powered by the Stone of Poseidon. Such great news for me. The explosion knocked me halfway across the throne room, and by the time I had recovered from reeling, I almost vomited at what I had to see. In my absence of a whopping seven seconds, about ten more Atlanteans tried attacking Krang at once; the twenty that attacked him with me were either dead or critically wounded. The ten that tried attacking him in my absence, most of them were dead too, and not in a subtle way. Three of the bodies had huge holes in their chests, about the size of bowling balls. Four more were brutally dismembered. There was a body with a decapitated head, another with only one limb left to his body, and the rest with huge red gory lines through their throats. To put insult to injury, as if he knew how much I wanted to beat him to a pulp, as Krang impaled the remaining two soldiers with his trident, he wa laughing maniacally. If I was capable of it, i'd be seeing red right now.

I roared, and rammed into Krang while inside a huge Solar Fist construct. We hit the wall so hard that the water rippled….well, rippled even more. Yeah, that's the other thing. While I wasn't exactly keeping tabs on Namorita, she was a big girl, she'd be fine, she and Byrrah were going at it relentlessly. And whether or not it was just him, or the two of them together, every blow was enough to cause waves to ripple through the throne room. Because of the space, the waves didn't really throw me off, but it was still a little distracting. Anyway, I let the construct go, activated my Blazing Sun Form, and managed to get in hard shots to Krang's head…...and promptly almost got killed again! Spoiler alert, Krang was a really good fighter, and had tons of weapons at his disposal. He swung at my face, and even though I caught his arm, his fist still hit the side of my face. Oh yeah, this guy was strong too. Maybe not Grant level strong, but certainly way stronger than me. Heck, it was like someone placed a shot put into a canon, and targeted my face with it; I actually flickered in and out of my Sun Form as I got launched halfway across the room. I managed to recover, only to get pelted in the chest with a ray of blue slight. Yup, Krang had repulsors on his hands too. Thanks to the combined efforts of my barely intact Sun Form, plus my armor, the blast only felt like someone slammed a mattress into me. However, after two more blasts to the chest, one of which that came from Krang's arc reactor thingy, not only was my Solar Form down and out, i'm pretty sure I was starting to get bruises under my armor. And I thought Jason was rough. I managed to get a giant shield construct up, i'd be using lots of those, and after a quick second to prepare, got my Sun Form up and running again. I quickly flew out of the path of Krang's next blast, and while flying at him again, created a charging bus construct, catching him completely off guard. He crashed into a wall, which was gonna be the least of his worries.

Or not.

No longer than maybe two seconds since he got trucked into the wall, the construct burst apart, and not because I willed it to. No, Krang blew it apart with his chest blast; the guy barely even looked fazed!

"OH, COME ON!" I yelled aloud.

Whether or not he heard that, Krang heeded my invitation. He launched a volley of missiles at me, but I don't fall for the same tricks twice. I went into Comet Speed, created a barrier around the missiles, which were less than a few feet away from Krang. I put a much effort as I could into keeping the barrier intact. Not just because I wanted the blast to hurt that douche tool as much as possible, but because I generally needed to see how much energy i'd need to use if I wanted to stand a snowball's chance of defending against his heavy artillery. The answer? A lot more than I was using right now. While I did manage to keep the blast in a relatively small radius, the shear force was still enough to break through the barrier. On the upside, literally, Krang shot up like a firecracker. Whether or not he actually took any damage though, I couldn't say; not only was he wearing armor, he also had a glowing blue aura around his body that signaled a long hard fight. Anyway, before he could recover, I launched a spear hook construct at him. While the blade didn't pierce the armor, it kinda just went all unfocused, I reconstructed the light into a lasso, and yanked back hard. I went into Comet Speed, created a flaming spiked fist construct, and after a quick jump of Solar Steroids to my arms, let Krang have a really wicked punch to the chest. I didn't slow down to enjoy him crash into the wall again. I created another spiked fist construct around my other fist, and started a fantastic rock em' sock em' attack. It was basically like playing volleyball with myself. Every punch I landed launched Krang with enough force to probably shatter through concrete. I was always there at every turn to make sure I didn't accidentally punch him through a wall, so I didn't get to test that theory out. I kept up the attack for a good 50 hits, before life remembered that I was winning too much. After I hit Krang with a hard uppercut, I tried to follow up with a double fist pound to plant him in the floor, but quickly had to get out of the way of a surprise repulsor blast. Seriously, that arm moved so fast; if my peripheral vision didn't catch it, my face would've taken all of that! As was such, Krang tried to gut me with a blade that came out of the top of his wrist gauntlet. I dodged it, summoned one of my blades to parry the other one, and before he could try for another stab, I shot him with a blast of light from my eyes. The blast merely threw him off-balance for a second, but that was more than enough time to take away a bit of his extensive weaponry. I went into Comet Speed again, set my blades on fire, and charged Krang.

As much as I hate to admit it, Krang was so much better than me at this; almost to a laughable extent. Starting out, I didn't do too bad. I faked him out, and ended up doing a flip over him. Krang spun around, pretty fast mind you, but I ducked under his back swing, and flew back a bit more, throwing some missile constructs out to distract him. Only like three of them actually hit him, this guy was wicked good at maneuvering, but they kept him away long enough for me to blindside him with another bus construct. I quickly created two clamp constructs, and flung them at his wrists. Granted, these constructs weren't all that strong. Heck, if Krang would've given it half a seconds thought, he could have broken them like glass. As was such, I willed the constructs to yanked his arms up, and before he even had a chance to question what was going on, I went into Comet Speed, gave my arms a strength boost, and slashed at his wrist blades. In hindsight, you could say that this was overkill, but I had no idea what his blades were made of, how much force i'd need to break them, or even if they could be broken. When you have so many questions to answer in such a short time, slow and steady experimentation goes completely out of the window. The good news, the blades WERE breakable, and I totally snapped them in half before Krang could stop me. I twisted in mid….water I guess? Whatever. I recovered well off from where Krang was, and hit him in the back with a Mega Sun Fist; this time, I could hear the walls crack a bit from the impact. I started to barrage him with fireballs, blasting him by the dozens at a time. I wish I could say it worked, but a huge, enough to put a crater where your house used to be huge, blast of blue energy shot out. To say I just barely got out of the way in the nick of time, would be an understatement. In truth, I was just an inch away from getting vaporized; something i'd look back on as an easy moment of the fight. Krang came back with a vengeance, tackling me hard in the gut, knocking the wind right out of me. He must've really had a hard on for those wrist blades, because I noticed a bit more ferocity in his attack. In the blink of an eye his right hand moved to his side, and a knife, i'm not even kidding, flew out of a sheath on the side of his boot and into his hand. Nothing gives you a second wind quicker than death being barely a foot away. I created an explosive wave, most of which was generated by pure adrenaline, and thankfully, was in a room so big I didn't have to worry too much about collateral damage. I bought myself maybe a second or two to bust out my Sun Swords, before Krang came swinging around again. He slashed kinda wildly at me, but after I ducked, while turning to capitalize, I had about half a second to block the knife that was about to cleave into my face. Barely a second later, Krang summoned his other knife, and jammed it into my neck. Yeah, I know this is the part where i'm supposed to die, but in the panic of the half second before my life ended, I made my Sun Form harden into a body shield that was just strong enough for me to not get shanked. I batted Krang away with a literal explosive punch, I ignited my hand with a burst of concentrated fire, and after getting over a quick reminder of my own mortality, flew after him; it was clear that this guy couldn't be allowed even half a second to regain momentum.

My momentum lasted all of three seconds. I slashed at him once with my left sword, only for it to be blocked, and get a boot to the chest so hard, it's a wonder my armor didn't dent. I managed to tap into Comet Speed just in time to catch Krang's knife, which he almost succeeded in throwing into my forehead. I created a mini-sun in my palm, and turned the heat up until the knife melted like a popsicle; that's another weapon Krang wouldn't be using anymore. I blasted at him with another barrage of fireballs, looking to off-balance him severely. Instead of dodging however, he activated an energy barrier that condensed into what I assume was some sort of energy shield. So along with his Iron Man armor, now i'd have to fight past an energy shield to get to him. Again, I should really think about how my life ended up getting to this point. Anyway, Krang came charging at me again, and if I may drop my usual disdain of cursing, this is where $#!+ got real! Krang charged at me fast, as in, even in Comet Speed I almost got decked in the face. The punch was so strong, it was as if a canon had went off; I could practically see what would've happened to my face if that punch connected. I powered up my entire body with Solar Steroids, and came up with a huge uppercut. Krang simply caught it, and countered with a punch to my side. The actual brunt of the punch wasn't so bad, my Sun Form offered me a slight amount of defense against attacks, even if I didn't focus it to be more durable; plus, the armor took at least half of what that punch was gonna be. But then came the arrow! Yeah, irony's a real bummer. Here I was, trying to avenge the death of Janus, only to get shot by the same weapon that killed him in the first place. I felt it go through my armor, but thankfully the amount of Solar Steroids I put into my body prevented the arrow from going in too deep. Heck, I managed to stifle my scream; didn't wanna give this jerk the satisfaction of an audible expression of pain. Even more, I kneed him hard in the gut, quickly created flaming spiked fist constructs around my hands, and succeeded in giving him an uppercut to the chin so hard, he blasted off faster than Team Rocket. What? Like you aren't low key nerd about something!

I planted Krang to the ground by striking him with a Sun Bolt, and restrained him with a giant hand construct. I quickly summoned my swords, connected them, and formed my Solar Spear. While flying at Krang, I set it on fire, and came down as fast as I could, trying to finish him before he could get out of my construct. I was literally a few feet away, before Krang busted out my construct with a blast from his chest. He didn't waste a moment getting his momentum back, shooting like twenty rockets at me. I propelled myself backwards, while simultaneously creating a half hearted wall of hard light. The impact alone would be enough to prematurely detonate the rockets, and I needed to be ready to defend against what was sure to be an extremely brutal attack from Krang. As I planned, the wall held up just enough to stop the missiles, and create a ripple effect that was big enough to disrupt the battle. Oh yeah, the battle was still going on pretty fierce around me. Atlanteans and piranhaoids were going at it like there was no tomorrow, which would be true for a lot of them. I caught a quick glimpse of Namorita and five other royal guards taking on Byrrah. Namorita was glowing with a blue/green aura, and seemed to be the only one able to fight him without being overwhelmingly out of her depth; wish the same could be said for me. Krang came flying through the remnants of the explosion, his trident braced for the killing blow. I dodged his first stab, slashed at him with my spear, and when he blocked it, I hit him in the face with a blast of light from my eyes. It wasn't much, but it put him off-balance enough for me to almost get him the the chest with my spear. But close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades. Krang parried the stab away with a casual twirl of his trident, and came back around with a stab aimed for my stomach. I blocked it with one of my spear points, using all of my strength to keep the prongs away from me; and believe me, Krang was plenty strong enough to make this more than a little difficult. He used my intense focus on not getting skewered to his advantage, twisting his trident to weaken my hold on my own weapon. He almost succeeded in ripping the spear away from me, but I did a side flip to keep my handle on it, and once getting my stance back, slashed at Krang. He of course blocked it, but I did some fancy spear fighting of my own, as I relentlessly kept up the attack. We went at it like this for a good five minutes, but we hardly stayed in one place as we battled. In a nutshell, it was basically a mix of ranged, melee, and construct fighting. Krang kept the pressure on me with his repulsor blasts and missiles, and even though I took some nasty attacks to the pretty much everywhere, I gave as good as I got; mostly with surprise vehicle constructs barreling into him when he least expected it. When Krang caught up to me, I was never the one on the offensive for long, he'd try gutting me again with his trident, while also trying to deck me with his ranged attacks. You wouldn't believe how many repulsor blasts, missiles, and arrows I dodged at point blank range, while also trying to defend against a golden three pronged spear. As was such, I managed to hold my own pretty well…..ok, well enough to not die. As far as speed went, I had Krang beat by half a point. When it came to strength and skill, he was way better than me, even with the Solar Steroids still giving me a boost. Like I said, the constructs I created helped me stay relevant in the fight, but with having to juggle so many skills and abilities at once, especially while away from the sun for so long, it was starting to slow me down.

"Impressive," Krang said as we kept up the fight. "Such skill, such ferocity, commendable adaptability."

How he found the focus to talk this leisurely in the middle of a fight showed just how out of my league he really was. Still didn't change how annoying his voice was. If anything, it just gave me the uncontrollable urge to stab him in the mouth.

"A shame I have to kill an opponent with such potential," he continued. "I almost feel a semblance of pity for you."

God in Heaven! Every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to shove a knife down it!

"Or," he continued, pulling out his spare knife; now fighting with a knife and trident. "Perhaps you could live to serve another purpose. A ruler needs to stay vigilant, and you'd be an excellent warm-up partner."

Only warm-up!? I started to fight a lot more aggressive after that comment.

"Come now, child," he kept talking; dear lord what I wouldn't do to make him stop! "The day is already won, and you are on the losing side."

Just ignore him, Sunbird. Rage is the enemy.

I had to keep that mantra up for a good ten times a second. Couldn't let Krang unsettle me; I was already as disadvantaged in this fight as it was.

"Still," he continued, not...shutting...the f*(#...up! "Perhaps you can serve a different purpose. I will be king soon, after I dispose of that boisterous idiot Attuma. But a "loyal general" deserves to be rewarded. Perhaps you can serve as a decent concubi-"

"NO!" I roared, pushing Krang away with an intense blast of light from my hand.

Forget calm and collected. This arrogant f*(# % deserved an earful of my shrill, unbridled girly rage!

"NEVER TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!" I roared, actually managing to get Krang hard across the chest with a hard slash of my spear.

My anger fueled my speed and strength, and for a while, it was me who had the forward drive in the fight.

"I WILL NEVER BE YOUR SERVANT!" I continued as I thrusted and slashed my flaming spear at Krang. "I WILL NEVER BE YOUR WHORE! BUT YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

"What in the name of Hell are you on about, little girl?!" Krang had the audacity to ask me as he defended himself. "I've done nothing to you, you insignificant wench! You are the one who insisted on interfering in matter you can scarcely comprehend!"

"WHY YOU-"

Whatever else I was gonna say, a quick blast of Krang's Unibeam interrupted it entirely. Usually this would be the part where he gets the upperhand for a large amount of time, before I take it back for him for two minutes tops before we switch roles again; emphasis on the word usually. I was way too pissed to let Krang get back in this fight. He came at me with his trident, twirling it around all fancy like, and then came at me with a quick stab to the chest. Well...I lie. He feinted a stab at me, which I completely fell for, before whacking at me with the shaft of his trident. While unexpected, and an extremely close call, I caught the shaft, and pulled. By this time, I was using my Solar Steroid power so constantly, the strain, while still there, was almost ignorable. Still, for as strong as I was making myself, Krang was still a good bit stronger. We played a three second game of tug a war, before I brought my spear up in an arc with all of my might, breaking it in half. This time, I think Krang actually pouted for half a second. He immediately backpedaled backwards, blasting at me with his repulsors. I dodged them all, blasting at him with rays of light too; though not getting any shots in either. I blasted, dodged, and kept moving forward, slowly but surely closing the gap, getting ever so close to him. When I got in super close, I ducked another one of his Unibeam blasts, and did something so stupid, even Grant would've called me out on it. I wrapped my left arm in an armored construct, and put everything I had into making it as durable as possible in a half second time frame. Before the part of my brain that prevents me from doing insane things kicked in, I grabbed Krang's palm, which was primed for a blast. Let me make this clear. I intentionally, and of my free will, blocked a repulsor blast with my own hand. For good measure, I blasted a ray of light from my armored hand as well; though that wouldn't exactly do wonders for me. The final result was….explosive to say the least. My arm construct held up just enough to block a good chunk of the blast; my counter blast helped repel it a bit. Still, my arm construct didn't hold. Even though I succeeded in turning Krang's blast against him, for the most part, the explosion ripped through my arm construct, and destroyed the hand piece of my actual armor. Most of my arm armor was still intact, and my hand was still protected by the underlayer of kevlar, but i'm pretty sure Mrs. Kennedy was gonna explode when she saw what I did to her suit. Krang didn't get off much better. While his repulsor was probably still functional, his gauntlet had scratches and dents in them. His repulsor was flickering a bit, and it seemed like some residual damage was rippling through his armor. I tightened my grip on my spear, knocked him up with a fire geyser, and continued my attack.

Something else I noticed in the split second I launched Krang upwards, aside from how shrill his voice could get, was how my fire affected his energy. Much like fire was the Achilles heel of Venom, the same seemed to be at least somewhat true for the Poseidon energy too. The burst of fire disrupted Krang's body shield. It was barely noticeable, and this was the first time this had happened since our battle started, but it was very clear his power was weakening; even if it was like 1%. I flew after Krang, activating my Blazing Sun Form, and cranking it up to an absurd degree. He recovered enough to get off a blast at me, but I easily dodged it and launched him into a wall with a blazing hammer construct. Again, Krang's body shield barely flickered, but I saw the fleeting look on his face. Whether he knew it or not, Krang was in trouble, and some part of him was scared. I charged him with my spear, but he quickly dodged my stab with an upward burst of propulsion, drew his sword, and came down with a power slash. I blocked his strike, moved his blade to the side, and hit him in the mouth with a hard elbow. His helmet had a visor that only stopped at his nose for some reason. Krang staggered a bit, giving me enough time to get another successful slash off across his chest. The next slash was blocked by Krang's sword, followed by him blasting at me with his Unibeam, but I was still satisfied with my progress. Krang pressed on with more repulsor blasts and missile strikes, forcing me to retreat and attack with blasts and constructs while fleeing. I played that game for maybe another minute, before forcing Krang to play by my terms again. I planted Krang to the palace floor by stopping suddenly, twisting over him as he flew by me, and kicked him hard in the back. As Krang face planted into the floor, I came down for a stab to the back, only to have it blocked by a blue hard light shield. Seriously, even Iron Man didn't have this much gear! Krang pushed back at me, forcing me to fight on the defensive again. This was one of those moments where it was painfully obvious how outclassed I was at armed combat against this guy. Even though I had a power, range, and somewhat of a versatility advantage, I couldn't count the amount of times I almost got impaled. Heck, the first slash I attempted was blocked by his shield, followed by a kick to my gut, and a stab to the chest that almost made impact. I just barely managed to duck under it, and try for a slash at Krang's legs. He jumped,over it, and I brought my spear up in a twirl. Krang blocked it, though the spear got dangerously close to his face, and continued to keep up the attack.

"Such fire!" Krang exclaimed. "In both the literal and metaphorical sense!"

"Stop fighting me, and i'll share all of it with you!" I responded.

Ok, not the best comeback; sue me.

"I sense an animosity against me," Krang continued. "What for, little girl? What have I done to wrong you?"

I was so mad at him for not knowing how upset I was, I almost forgot that from his perspective I was just another random dogooder trying to foil his plans. Huh, maybe guys actually are as ignorant as they pretend to be. No offense, boys.

"Not me!" I shot back at Krang. "But since he's not here, I owe you a beat down from Janus!"

I'll admit, I got a little emotional with that last response. I slammed my spear down on Krang's shield, the impact nearly split the water around us in half. See, Moses? I can do it too!, Krang buckled against the force of the impact, but still managed to hold his ground. He stabbed at me with his sword, but I swept it away with my spear and kept fighting.

"Janus?!" he asked me rather shocked. "How the hell do you know about that arrogant-"

Even in the middle of a fight, epiphany moments didn't make this guy miss a beat at all. Even worse, he started laughing! No, I want you to really understand this! While I was huffing and puffing, trying desperately to take this guy down, while he easily dodged, and blocked all of my attacks, he was roaring with laughter! Son of a bitch! Oh… Look, sorry for the language, but you don't understand! This man was such a tool! Unfortunately for him, I absolutely HATED being laughed at; condescendingly at least. My Blazing Sun Form heated up even more, I pumped so much Solar Steroids into myself to where it actually started hurting now, and let Krang have it.

"STOP LAUGHING!" I roared at him, blasting him with a highly concentrated bolt of fire. "THERE IS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT TORTURING AND KILLING AN INNOCENT MAN!"

The blast launched Krang back a considerable bit, but the rolled out of the way of my stab, and came around with a slash to my back.I ducked under it, hit him in the chest with another blast of fire, and kept with the fighting.

"Firstly," Krang responded, still chuckling. "Namor's little lapdog would, and probably has done the same thing in the name of Atlantis; let's not be pointing fingers here, girl. Also, you?! Of all the great reinforcements that Janus could find, of all the super beings of the surface world, Janus wanted to retrieve a vain, ignorant child to defend his city?"

I kicked at him hard. Sure it only hit the shield, put I made a small burst of energy erupt from the impact. Plus that was all of my anger in one kick. Krang nearly went flying into a wall, but managed to recover at the last second. Still, I was not in the mood for more of his swordplay. I made a string of solar webbing fly from my wrist, tether to Krang's sword, and I yanked it away from him; Grant would've been so proud of me! I caught it, melted it to goo, and rushed after Krang. Even now he couldn't hide his frustration of having all of his weapons stripped away from him. I slammed my spear into his shield, forcing him against a wall. For what it was worth, at least my Blazing Sun Form was doing its job. Up close like this with Krang, my flames were murder on his body shield. The blue aura was flickering worse than a light bulb with bad wiring. If it wasn't for the shield between us…..well, he probably would've blasted me with his Unibeam. Didn't think about that. Whatever though.

"What's the matter?" I taunted Krang, who was grunting a bit. "Harder to fight without your toys?"

Miraculously, Krang didn't respond. I finally succeeded in shutting him up! I would've celebrated right then, but Krang spoiled my fun before it started. His body shield suddenly went out for half a second. For a moment, I thought his suit had run out of juice, but then his light shield got even brighter. I didn't even have time to back away before his shield gave off a hard burst of energy, forcing me a good ten feet back. I'll admit that the blast disoriented me, and Krang wasted no time in taking advantage of that. I felt the familiar sensation of three simultaneous repulsor blasts against my chest. The force of the blast planted me into the ground like a rock, then continued even further. Seriously, until I managed to raise a shield around myself, the repulsor beams were practically wiping me across the floor. As soon as I managed to get under my barrier….it was blown apart. Guess I kinda forgot Krang's suit had mini missiles in it. Yeaaah, after getting blown into the next century….and almost through the throne room walls, I wouldn't be forgetting that any time soon.

I recovered just in time to avoid a sailing knife that barely landed a few inches from my head. If my hair wasn't tied back, I probably would've been missing a good handful of it. Again, I forgot about the two knives strapped to Krang's biceps, but a quick mini-sun took care of the one he just threw at me. He released another volley of missiles at me, but I raised a wall in front of them, creating another premature explosion that Krang took full on. I rushed into him, and whacked him across the chest with my spear, which had more heat on it than three bonfires. The sheer force of my swing caused a shockwave to erupt through the entire throne room; also Krang went flying into a wall again. I wonder if you can play ping pong with people, because that's basically what was happening right now. Anyway, I was pretty sure I was wearing Krang down now. His aura flickered off for a total three seconds, and if I was just a little bit faster, I probably could've ended him. Yikes, I was turning into Jason! As was such, Krang propelled himself out of the way of my spear, just barely managing to keep his head. Instead of backing away from me while blasting me with repulsors, he activated his shield, and rushed into me. My first thought was "what does he expect to do with just a shield?". Then I thought about the hundreds of other people who must've thought the same thing with Captain America, before waking up with concussions. I blocked his charge by bracing my spear against his shield. When he moved my spear out of the way, I quickly ducked under a unibeam blast, and got him in his side with a hard kick, making sure to push him a few feet away with an explosive charge. With his free hand, Krang blasted at me with his repulsor, as well as launching a few more missiles at me. I'd be lying if I said they were easy enough to dodge, but i'm not gonna pretend it was an excruciatingly difficult labor; i'm pretty graceful when I need to be. I quickly closed the gap between me and Krang, and feinted a stab at his left side, before quickly reversing my spear around my back, and coming for his right side with a hard slash. I didn't expect to get him, but I expected that he'd expect I wouldn't get him. He blocked my spear with his shield, but before he could do whatever, I leaned back and kicked his it as hard as I could with a backwards leaning sidekick. Not sure if that's an actual thing, but I did it. This time, Krang went flying back towards the busted throne room doors. Before he could get back in the fight, I planted him to the ground by slapping him down with a giant flaming hand construct. Then I used the same hand construct to backhand and pin him into the wall beside the entrance. I poured all of my concentration into keeping that construct up for as long as possible. My plan was to force Krang's energy to burn out; no pun intended. Like I said, my fire was murder on Poseidon energy, if I could keep Krang pinned between a wall and a hot place, I could burn him dry. I managed to keep him pinned for a total of ten seconds, before things got difficult again. See, while his power was flickering dangerously like a candle in the wind, he seemed to have a lot of reserves in the tank. How much? I don't know, but seeing as he eventually managed to blast apart a hand construct bigger than his ego, as well as his entire body, the answer was: enough. I gave him zero seconds to recover, before coming in for a flying stab. His aura was a lot dimmer than usual, and even he couldn't fake being ok after being trapped in the furnace for so long. Even then, in a miraculous burst of speed, he jumped out of the way of my spear, which pierced the palace walls like a knife through Styrofoam. I looked up just in time to see him throw a knife at my head, which I deflected by swiping it away with the flat of one of my spear blades. Krang came down for what I assume was gonna be some sort of tackle, but I said no way to that, and got him in the face with a hard backflip kick, followed by, after twisting into a side position, a sweeping kick across the side of his face. In the half second it took for him to grunt, I shot a solar web out, latched it onto the deflected knife, still flying towards the rest of the battle, and yanked it back full force at him. I wasn't aiming anywhere in particular, just testing the limits of his body shield. As was such, the knife found its mark in Krang's side; going through the dimmed blue aura, and piercing the armor.

The armor was still pretty strong without the abundance of energy to back it though. While I pierced the armor, only about 25% of the blade actually went through. Granted, my spear was made of Adamantium and Vibranium, so probably wouldn't be too much of a problem for me. Anyway, Krang made a "GRRAAAHURR!" sound, that made me think he was coughing up a hairball. Also, and I hate myself for admitting this, but I kinda sorta enjoyed his pain. No, not on a sadistic level, just catharsis. After what he did, he had this and so much more coming to him. Before I could get a chance to finish him off, this man had ungodly keen reflexes, he blasted me in the face with a repulsor ray. My Sun Form took all of that, but it was still disorienting and frustrating. By the time I could see straight again, Krang was already charging me with his shield and knife. I flew back, shooting blasts of fire at him, trying to get my bearings again. It seemed like I wasn't the only one who could be graceful in the water, as Krang dodged every blast he didn't block with his shield. Still, he didn't count on me creating a wall construct in front of him. I wish I could've taken a vid of it, because it was so GIF worthy. I created another wall construct, this one with spikes in it, and smashed it into Krang. I'm not saying I was disappointed that he wasn't a blob of jelly afterwards, but i wasn't pleased that his body shield seemed to be self recharging. I followed up the failed compactor attempt by planting him to the ground with a Sun Bolt, and willing a barrage of fireballs to rain on him from every direction. I maybe got a good five seconds of uninterrupted fire blasting before, after a sudden surge of energy, Krang erected a barrier around himself, completely stonewalling my blasts. In retrospect, I probably could've poured on the extra fire power and force the barrier down, but this thing was strong enough to where it was making my blasts ricochet and spin off in crazy angles. I didn't wanna take the risk of bringing down the entire room just for a small win. Instead, I gripped my spear, fed it a little more fire for good measure, reactivated the Solar Steroids, and flew into the barrier, whacking it over the top with all my strength. The barrier smashed like glass, which made me extremely wary of either how strong I was, or how much fire was actually coursing around my spear. Krang on the other hand, just wanted my head. He flew at me, his knife and shield at the ready, and after flipping the blade into a reverse grip, made a stab attempt at my neck. I ducked under it, moved out of Krang's kicking range, and sidestepped his knife thrust to my face. While, kicking his shield, I managed to get a hold of his wrist, twist it, and force him to drop his knife; I of course melted it. At this point, Krang was desensitized to it though. He just resumed blasting at me with a mix of repulsor blasts, missiles, and occasional mini arrows out of his gauntlet, forcing me to play the fly n' blast game for a minute.

"What's even more comedic," Krang called out to me, either forgetting, or not caring that I was ignoring his monologue. "Is that you actually think you are protecting innocents!"

Ok, usually I can ignore stupid comments, but what the heck was he talking about?

"You're the one who's trying to coup the throne!" I responded, blasting fireballs and missile constructs at him. "How many Atlanteans, and sea creatures are you sending to the slaughter just to set up another betrayal?! You can't even stay loyal to your own team!"

"Oh please! How many times has Namor been at odds with your surface world heroes?! How many times has he used the armies of Atlantis to inflict war and death on the surface world?! Admit it child, you are defending a city of killers and xenophobes!"

Krang poured on the speed, blasting more projectiles at me with a renewed intensity. Again, they were easy enough to dodge, and I got him again in the face with a giant flaming fist construct. Seriously, is he ever not gonna fall for that? Once he hit the golden floor, I created a Sun Spot around him, and made a huge pillar of fire erupt from below him. I made sure to keep the pillar from hitting the ceiling; again, didn't wanna do any home wrecking. I thought that this would be the trick that finally did Krang in. I mean, a continuous wave of fire that also happened to be on a spot of gravity 2X that of the earth? It should've been a hook, line, and sinker. Sure enough, Krang proved an annoying habit of not knowing how to stay down. A unibeam blast pelted me in the chest, making my vision swim. Before I knew what happened, I felt something blunt hit my head, my chest, and then my head again, in that order. I also felt something electric wrap around my throat; believe me, I was all too aware with how electricity feels, even through the protection of my Blazing Sun Form. I felt the the electric tether yank me forwards, and again, felt the all too familiar sensation of getting blasted in the chest with Krang's Unibeam. This time, at such close range, the blast knocked me right out of my Sun Form, and made me drop the Solar Steroids. I hit the floor hard, my head bouncing off the marble floor. I'm petty sure if someone held up one finger, i'd see seven, but even with my vision a complete blur, I could make out something golden and blue about to land on my head. On a reflex, I create an energy barrier, and made it explode when Krang hit it, forcing him back., I hummed the Mockingjay theme, and healed myself immediately afterwards. I guess I could add bruised ribs to the slight concussion I had, because it felt like someone had wrapped most of my chest in an icy hot sleeve where the hot came first. I quickly got up, turned on my Sun Form, and charged Krang with my spear again, while blasting at him with a volley of fireballs. On one hand, I did get to see that it was indeed an electric whip, shooting out of Krang's gauntlet wrist, that was around my throat. That made me more appreciative to the fact that I was still alive, and more pissed at Krang for putting a leash around my neck. Krang retracted his whip, and resumed blasting at me with his free repulsor hand. I turned up my own speed, and even at point blank range, dodged the beams while blasting and slashing at him. While we fought, a small part of my mind wandered back to what Krang had said earlier about Atlantis. True, I didn't have much experience with them, but even I couldn't ignore some of the things I saw on TV while growing up. Like in 2006, when Namorita and the New Warriors caused an explosion in Stanford, killing at least 600 people, including children. Or when Namor and an army of Atlantis got involved in the final battle that same year, when the heroes were fighting each other over the Registration Act. Heck, just a few years ago he and the X-Men fought the Avengers, which led to him and a few of them getting fire powers or something like that. I'm not too in the know about the specifics, but I do know he used his power to attack Wakanda, killing God knows how many of Black Panther's people. The point being, Namor wasn't a hero and I knew this. I'm not sure he was even a good man. As much as I hated to admit it, Krang had a point; Atlantis wasn't exactly a city of saints.

"Grrahh!" Krang growled at me, as he just barely blocked a stab from my spear. "You are becoming quite bothersome, girl!"

"You're not exactly a hoot and a half either!" I responded. "But if you wanna stop fighting, feel free, it'll make my job a lot easier!"

"I have a throne to secure! You will not stand in my way!"

"I've been doing that for a while now, and the throne doesn't belong to you!"

"It should! You think Namor a ruler?! A good king?! That half-breed has bounced back and forth between being an ally an enemy of the surface world for too long! Attuma may be a violent, idiot monger, but at least he has a clear isolated plan of existence away from the surface world!"

"Sounds reasonable, if he could grasp the idea of democracy, he'd probably have my vote. But if that's the case, why do you have a target on his head too?"

"Because for too long Atlantis has hidden in the shadows of existence, hiding our glory as if we are no more than rats in a sewer. The surface dwellers have no regard for the waste they dump into our domain, the pollution that poisons the very element that gives us life!"

"There's this new thing called Ocean Conservation Groups, try getting in touch!"

"Fool! I care not for the fruitless attempts of imbeciles and charlatans! Atlantis needs me to be her king! Namor is a confused boy, pretending to be a man! Attuma wants power purely for its sake, but I am superior to them both! I will drown the surface world in its own blood! Cover its tallest towers and highest mountains in water!"

"Pretty sure Noah can tell you that's been done already!"

"And so it will be done again! I will eliminate the surface, flood the world in our glory, where we might expand; our kingdom no longer limited to the depths!"

"You call 75% of the earth limited?! You've got to get on this other new thing called math! Also, you've just told me why Namor, despite not being the perfect king, is miles better than you!"

"You think I pretend to be noble? To strive towards doing what is good for BOTH of our races?! I care only for the glory of Atlantis under my rule! Namor is too confused to do what must be done, Attuma, too weak, but I will surpass them all! ATLANTIS IS MINE!"

With his big Leonidas battle cry, his arc reactor light up like a Christmas tree. At first I thought he was going for some kind of huge chest blast, but after I retreated, sealing myself in a barrier for good measure, I found that wasn't the case. Instead, while his arc reactor ended up being dimmed down a significant bit, the aura around his armor was literally a blaze of blue fire. Basically, imagine my Blazing Sun Form, but blue, and just a smidge more intense. He gave me a glare that let me know I was dead for sure. I did the only thing I could do. I fought like heck!

So for starters, Krang's new form was strong enough to shake off constructs with relative ease. Seriously, after five giant flaming missile, fists, and sword constructs, he only faltered in his movements twice. To make things so much worse, this guy at least tripled his speed and strength. I've never shown it to Jason or Grant, but when I want to be, especially while flying, I can be much faster than them. The only reason I usually don't, is out of concern for my energy reserves. As of now, Krang was probably a good few steps faster than even that; only a few notches away from being able to keep up with me in Super Sunbird. I had to burn through so much energy, i'd have to spend at least three hours of sunbathing just to get it all back. Not counting the insane amount of Solar Steroids I was pumping through my body, that didn't consume energy, I had to spend every following second in Comet Speed, just to barely keep ahead of the threat of disintegration. Every blast out of Krang's repulsors was enough to put a tank down for the count, which did wonders for the throne room wall decorum. Unlike before, these blasts were not easy at all to dodge, Krang was that fast. Oh, and as for his strength? Well, let's just say after one shot to the face, after I quite literally was punched through two of the palace walls, so much pain, I got a reasonable guesstimate. Like always, my Sun Form protected my body from being turned into a slushy, but it took me a good few seconds to shake off the residual pain. Lucky for me, Krang's arrogance seemed to amplify along with his power; if it were Goblin or Venom, they'd already be on me to finish the job. As was such, it was extremely satisfying, not to mention therapeutic, when I slammed Krang with a Mega Blazing sledgehammer construct, and continued to slam it on top of him again, and again, and again, and again. I actually felt bad about it, because while doing so, I broke my rule about trying to cause minimum damage to the throne room. Yeah….whoever had to repair this marble floor, I hope they get paid well, because I did a number on the spot that I was piledriving Krang. Still, he showed little signs of his power fading. Granted, he was getting smashed through solid marble, so I couldn't see much of whatever was happening to him, but from what I did see, he maybe faltered in power for half a second before it would reset itself. Anyway, it's not like I was able to keep him subdued for too long.

A pillar of blue fire absolutely destroyed my construct, and while I barely managed to avoid Krang taking my head off with a flying cross punch, everything absolutely went to Hell afterwards. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Things didn't get that bad, but they definitely weren't sunshine and rainbows; I love sunshine and rainbows, especially sunshine. For the next few minutes Krang and I fought each other relentlessly, and just like the case with everything super speed related, a minute may as well have been an hour. To my credit, out of the hundreds of punches and blasts we were dishing out, I hit Krang a lot more than he hit me, but when he connected, I definitely felt it more. I whacked him a lot more with my spear, but he was so protected by his body shield, that he was blocking my strikes with his arms, and on more than a few occasions tried yanking it away from me. Again, as much as i'd like to pat myself on the back for a good effort, that only goes for so much when you're in a fight for your life. While Krang and I were in another punching and kicking fest, this guy was wicked good at whatever type of martial art he was doing, he faked a punch to my face, and opened his palm. I was used to this, just another one of his repulsor blasts, so I bent my back, dodging it just barely. The problem came immediately afterwards. I felt a bigger, much stronger blast hit me from point blank range, and plant me hard into the floor. It was obviously his Unibeam, and if you've ever seen Independence Day, that blast was doing to me, what the alien ship did to the white house. I tried to get a barrier over myself, but it was like trying to push back a tidal wave, completely useless. Then came the arrows. That's right, it wasn't enough for Krang to slowly wear me down with his uber powerful Unibeam, he had to add injury to insult. I didn't know that my arms were lying outwards, but I felt something like metal stakes being jammed into them and my hands at bullet speed. I figured the Unibeam was wearing my Blazing Sun Form down, but it was way weaker than I thought, because those stakes burrowed through my armor, and into my flesh like a hot knife through butter. Krang must've wanted to hear me scream, because as soon as I was pinned to the floor, the Unibeam stopped, and my scream of pain echoed through the water. I'm pretty sure there were involuntary tears coming from my eyes, which probably meant nothing, me being underwater and all.

"WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT YOU STANDING IN MY WAY?!" Krang roared at me.

I opened my eyes just in time to see him coming in for a landing, and in the state I was in, he probably could've put a hole in my chest with just his fist. You better believe I put every shred of focus I had into putting a barrier around myself. Krang slammed into a dome of golden flames, and even though the impact rattled it, it did hold up. Krang kept pounding and wailing at my shield, roaring in laughter at how I was practically defenseless. Every punch was almost the one that got through. I had to focus so much time on refreshing the strength of my shield, I couldn't get the arrows out of my arms. I wondered if anyone was ever crucified to the ground before? Anyway, after several dozen more hits, Krang backed up at long range, and seemed like he was gonna try blasting my shield down; his mistake, was giving me time. I created a giant flaming octopus tentacle out of the floor, and wrapped in around him. Again, I broke my only rule about damaging the throne room, because I started slamming Krang into the floor, whipping him into walls, and dragging his arrogant face through the floor again. While doing that, I worked on patching what was sure to be multiple gaping wounds in my arms.

All things considered, they weren't that bad. I had two arrows in each of my biceps, one in each forearm, and of course, one in each of my hands. I created eight hand constructs, willed them to grab and arrow, and before I could talk myself down, made them yank the arrows out of me. White hot pain, more intense than anything i've ever felt in my life, shot through every nerve in my arm. I couldn't stop myself from screaming, crying, and thrashing slightly, but I kept that tentacle construct up; I couldn't afford to let Krang take an inch. I took a look at my arms, only to see geysers of blood pouring out of them. My arms were throbbing with excruciating pain, every pulse felt like someone had put anvils into my arms. Still, I managed to reign myself in, stop my blubbering, and sing. I sang "Aloha E Komo Mai" by Jump 5. If you don't know who they are, I don't blame you, they were kind of a one hit wonder from back in the days when Disney Channel was actually good. Anyway, I sung the first half of that song, and completely patched the holes in my arm. I sung a few more lyrics to account for the blood loss, yes I can regenerate blood with my healing powers, and was ready to get back in the game in no time. Too bad the exact same thing can be said for Krang. At that moment, he pulled out his electric whips, and slashed my tentacle construct to shreds. He ended up in a kinda funny upside down position, but given the murder stare I got once he realigned himself, there was nothing funny. I quickly called my spear back to me, it was still a flaming metal stick, so I just controlled the flames around it. Krang's arc reactor lit up, but before it could shoot, a trident impaled it.

I know I sound like i'm joking, I know that seems, and is, completely out of left field, but that's seriously what went down. One second, I was staring down the barrel of a Unibeam blast, the next, a slender golden trident was lodged in the arc reactor that was gonna shoot it.

Krang didn't have time to pull back, and just like I thought, the blast overloaded and exploded in his face. He was completely blown backwards in a blue starburst of energy, and I knew for certain the worse part of what he could do was over. Even more, I owed Namorita big time. Either she was the one who threw the trident into Krang's Iron Man ripoff, or Byrrah had really bad aim. I looked over to where she was, about to send her a mental thank you, and then my stomach dropped.

I never considered it, but at the speed that trident impaled Krang, from an impossibly frustrating angle to hit such a small target, that must've taken a lot off effort, and more important, attention. As was such, Byrrah took advantage of that, and nailed her hard across the face, sending her careening across the throne room floor. Byrrah leapt after her, his trident primed for a stab. No. Just...no. Namorita and I may have had a….let's call it a difficult work relationship, but she just kinda sorta saved my life. No way was this guy gonna kill her! I flew over as fast as I could, intercepting him, and brought my spear across his head hard. Body aura or not, which he totally had, this guy's helmet shattered like an egg, leaving him wide open for the mother of all uppercuts to the face. I was in my Blazing Sun Form, and at this point, using Solar Steroids was a given, but even I was surprised, when I punched Byrrah through an entire wall!

"_Thank you," _Namorita thought to me.

"_I should be the one thanking you," _I thought back to her. "_You totally saved my butt back there!"_

"_I accept your gratitude, now go finish off Byrrah! Krang's power has been weakened, I can handle him until you finish!"_

"_You sure?"_

"_Without a doubt, now go!"_

I felt a bit uncomfortable leaving Namorita alone with Krang. So far, all of the piranhaoids were disposed of, but so were our own forces; it was just me and her versus Krang and Byrrah. Well, I suppose Llyra was on their team too, but she wasn't doing anything physically. Still, as much as I hated the thought of her fighting Krang, even if he was weakened, by herself, we didn't have time to argue. I flew as fast as I could through the car sized hole I put though the throne room wall.

I found Byrrah crashing into what I assumed to be the palace dining room. Long golden tables stretched as far as a cathedral, and the space of this room could easily fit at least five thousand people. There was some kind of object hanging from the ceiling that looked like a multicolored disco ball made of multiple gelatinous orbs. At the head of the place was this too beautiful table made of crystal, only wide enough for three people. At the center was another throne, exactly the same as the one back in the throne room, and flanking the two ends of the table were these absolutely stunning statues of a handsome male in a loose robe that only covered the lower half, and a beautiful woman wearing a seashell bikini, yes really,. They both were wielding tridents, and were blowing into conch shells. I describe this room so vividly, because I absolutely refused to fight Byrrah here. The throne room was already in renovations mode, if you wanna call it that, a few more dings wouldn't make a difference. This beautifulness was absolutely off limits. Fortunately, Byrrah landed just between two aisles of tables, and only made a small crack in the floor. That would be the last one. I flew past him, turned around, and after launching him in the air via flame geyser, I tackled him from behind, and flew him back into the throne room. I slammed him into the ground, my feet firmly planted in his back, and jumped off, letting him slide a few more feet across the room. I didn't expect him to stay down long, so it came as no surprise when Byrrah got up, hefted his trident, and swam at me with a huge "GRAAAAAAAAAH!" To his credit, at least Byrrah probably wouldn't be the monologuing type.

I sidestepped his attack, and grabbed him by his cape. Seriously? The guy refused to wear a full set of armor, but had a cape? Sure, why not? I spun him around as fast as I could, and let him go, his flight path indicating he'd sail right through the throne room entrance. I didn't let him off that easy though. I went into Comet Speed, flew past him, and kicked him under the chin with a backflip kick. Byrrah went careening upwards, and I got him again in the chest with a hard slash. To be honest I wasn't entirely sure if he'd survive. Sure, Krang's body aura was pretty durable, but that was because he had a suit that amplified and replenished the energy. Lucky for Byrrah, it looked like he had enough energy to spare. I followed up the slash with a hard kick to his chest, and let him fall to the floor. Byrrah was of course annoyingly resilient, and hopped to his feet just as soon as he hit the deck. I let him come at me, casually avoided the slashes and thrusts of his trident, before finally punching him in the throat, batting him away with my own spear, and snapping his trident in half. I gotta admit, there was something about breaking the bad guy's stuff that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. After that, the fight was cake. Chocolate cake hand delivered on a silver platter.

While he was still fast enough that it required some effort to keep ahead of him, ultimately Byrrah couldn't touch me if his life depended on it; which it kinda sorta did. I flew circles around him, whacking him as hard as I could with my spear over and over again, basically playing a game of tennis with him. On the off chance that he was actually able to break the flow, it never ended well for him. For example, after hitting him round and round about 60 times in a glorious medley of graceful violence, Byrrah managed to surprise me, by recovering from careening backwards, upside down, and managed to transform the momentum into what would've been a pretty hard punch to my face. Surprising? Yes. Effective? Nope! Like I said, speed was everything, and this guy did not have enough of it. I drifted to the side of his punch, grabbed his cape again, and wrapped it around his head. I followed that up with a Tiger Knee to the chest, followed by a reverse kick, and brought it all to a nice and clean finish by bringing him back with a spear hook construct, and slamming him to the floor with a whack of my spear to his head. I was certain that I was giving this poor man a headache for the history books, but I couldn't afford to let up. Unfortunately for him, I was just getting into my groove. I started blasting him from all sides with fireballs, really trying to get that bothersome body aura out of the way. I kept up the volley for a good several hundred blasts, before getting more thorough with it. I think it's worth noting that Byrrah was a dizzy, bumbling mess; which worked absolutely splendid in my favor. What ensued next was either my most creative, or most cruel act of violence ever. It started with one punch, just one, but the rest was mayhem. As Byrrah was careening backwards, I created a bus construct, made it slam into his back, and drive him straight into a wall construct I put up just a few feet away from myself. Even in the explosion of golden inferno, I could still find Byrrah, and proceeded to kick him in the side of his jaw, and hammer pound him back to the floor. Before he could made impact, I shot him back up with a fire geyser, and unleashed the wrath of the sea on him. What does that mean? Lots and lotsa sea creature constructs! Dozens of flaming sharks, swordfish, eels, puffer fish, dolphins, and stingrays, all crashing into Byrrah at the speed of bullets. Each time they made impact, they combusted into explosions 3X the force of grenades, and being the absolute master of this that I was, I reshaped the fire into another animal construct, and kept the damage chain going. Heck, as the next minute and a half went by, it wasn't just animal constructs I whipped up. I went commando on Byrrah, throwing in some missile, tank, grenade, and even Gatling gun constructs to help with the cause. Yeah, sometimes even I can admit these powers bring out a side to me i'd rather keep inside. Anyway, after like a bazillion blasts of fire, I finally burned Byrrah out, but not in the way I expected to.

While I was definitely picking up on the fact that his aura was fading fast, I expected it to go out like a dimming candle; not as a July 4th fireworks bang! No, really, that's not hyperbole! From out of nowhere, as Byrrah was getting rained on with solar bullets, with his aura dimming out drastically, there was a sudden explosion of power that blew apart all of my constructs, and sent me blasting through a layer of the ceiling. I have absolutely no idea where that sudden burst of power came from. Maybe it was a hidden ability Byrrah had, but didn't show until now? Maybe it was just a product of fear and desperation? In any case, after I shook off the pain of being launched through a wall of….let's assume it was some kind of stone, I flew back down to the throne room, and found a very, very, very, comforting discovery. While Byrrah was still up and kicking, his power was cut down to a third at most. His blue aura was almost completely dimmed out, and even though he was swimming at me, his fist cocked back for a swing, even a blind person could see how out of it he was. I of course turned my Solar Steroids back on, cranked up my Blazing Sun Form, and rocketed into Byrrah with the mother of all flying kicks, propelling us both into the ground so hard, I created a 3 foot crater in the floor. I tapped into Comet Speed, stood him up, and relentlessly punched him in the across every inch of his body, until his aura completely died out, and I knocked him out with a hard punch dead center of his face. I let myself have a small party in my head, while calling my spear back to me, and directing my attention to Namorita's battle with Krang.

From what I was seeing, she wasn't exactly doing too bad. With Krang's power source cut in half, he was a lot slower, and from the looks of it, a lot weaker. While him and Namorita were absolute beasts at fighting hand to hand, he had to rely a lot more on using his repulsors, to keep her at bay. Granted, he was no slouch, and actually managed to catch her trident by the prongs, and diverting the momentum of her stab away from his already damaged arc reactor. He punted her away with a hard reverse kick, and after gripping the trident right, threw it straight for her stomach. Thankfully, a handy shield of light popped up to protect Namorita from getting impaled. As she did a backflip, recovering next to me, I redesigned the light shield into a hand, and flew her trident back to her.

"Thank you, Sunbird," she said in a tone that I swear was genuine gratitude.

She cracked her neck, twirled her trident around, and stared Krang down. The look of absolute panic on his face was worth top dollar.

"Shall we kick his arrogant ass together?" she asked me.

"Indeed we shall," I said, as we charged him together.

At this point, Krang absolutely lost his mind. He opened fire on the two of us in a completely desperate volley of missiles.

"_Attack him from the bottom!" _Namorita thought to me, as we dodged the missiles. "_Mimic my movements, and cut him off his maneuverability!"_

A small part of me wanted to scream at her for giving me orders while I was trying my hardest not to get hit with rockets, but after I was safely out of harm, and saw what she was doing, I got her drift. She was either swimming, or flying, she had wings on her ankles, at Krang from up high in a downwards curve. If I did the same thing, it would cut off Krang's linear mobility, as he was almost backed up against a wall. Plus, we were getting along a lot better now; I didn't wanna endanger that. I did as she said, and was about to get a good whack in on Krang, but at the last second, he blasted about 20 feet straight forward, avoiding us completely. I turned around, and saw his hands raised for a repulsor blast.

"NO!" I shouted, as I decked him to the floor with a Sun Bolt.

He got up quickly, but it was only to get slashed in the chest, and kicked in the side of his head. Yeah, despite the small tussle I had with his partner, Krang was still past due for a beat down. I slashed him a good three times across the chest, but was blocked on the last attempt. He quickly jabbed me in my face, and gave me hard front kick to the chest. Yup. Definitely not as strong as he used to be. If that were ten minutes ago, i'd be seeing stars. As was such, I still stammered backwards, but Namorita came to my rescue before anything got out of hand. Heck, she moved so fast, I barely had time to comprehend what she was doing. I hate how I have to actually try to make myself perceive things faster, Jason and Grant don't have it easy! Anyway, she darted past us, and came around in a U turn so fast, even I couldn't mistake what she was trying to do. I ducked and punched Krang as hard as I could in the stomach, while at the same time, Namorita slammed into his back at probably 90 mph. Krang made that awkward noise of pain that I loved so much, and I gave him an uppercut to the jaw, while Namorita stabbed him in the back of the knee. His aura was still up, so he wasn't critically hurt, but he still at least felt the force of the blow, because his leg completely gave out on him.

"_Circle him!" _Namorita thought to me. "_Attack hard, fast, and keep moving!"_

Ok, Delta Speed Thrasher, but with only two people; simple, got it. A small part of me wanted to snap at her for suggesting that first botched up plan, but if I was gonna snap at her, i'd have to acknowledge the many, many plans me and my team made on the fly, only to mess up spectacularly. Besides, as far as plans went, this one worked out pretty well. There was really no rhyme or reason to where me or Namorita struck, just for it to make Krang hurt as much as possible. Legs. Chest. Face. Back. Everything was fair game, and boy did we cash in! For the next two minutes we beat down on Krang so hard, I almost felt sorry for him. Even more surprising, was how well me and Namorita worked together. We weren't flawless, but i'd give us an at least 7.5/10. When I attacked Krang's chest and stomach, she was usually attacking the back or the head. We took turns kicking his head, actually managing to crack his stupid helmet open, and don't get me started on his kneecaps and sides. While it was very clear that my burning spear was really the only thing that was bringing Krang's power down, Namorita provided the extra force necessary to keep Krang from effectively using his repulsors. I'll admit that he pulled the rug out from under us one time though. He caught my spear, which was going for a slash to his helmet, and kicked me away, while simultaneously jumping into a reverse kick to Namorita's chest, followed by a repulsor blast that floored her hard. He made a move to swim after her, but I launched two spear hook constructs into his back, and pulled him down; his body crashing five feet away from me. As he got to his knees, I created a Sunspot under him, and cranked the gravity up three times. Somehow, as I flew towards him, he found the strength to move one of his arms up, and shot a repulsor blast at me. I dodged it, grabbed his arm, and after quickly summoning one of my throwing knives, and charging it with some fire, I stuck it straight in his repulsor, and let it detonate. While i'm not sure how much of his actual hand felt that, his gauntlet was still very much intact, the repulsor was fried; he'd have to use his left hand now. I didn't have time to gloat about it though, as I just barely had enough time to bend under a Unibeam blast, that actually almost ended up pelting Llyra! Seriously, it was just a foot away from hitting the throne, and if Llyra was aware that she almost got blasted with enough force to total a garbage truck, she didn't let on. Heck, now that I think of it, she wasn't moving at all, just muttering whatever, as magic runes and stuff floated around her. Anyway, the quick exchange between Krang and I was enough time for Namorita to get back in the fight, who made her presence known, by whacking Krang in the side of his head with her trident.

We continued for another 30 seconds of clean, fun, Krang beating, actually managing to get his aura down to a barely flickering state…..before Byrrah came back to ruin the fun. No, you did not read that wrong, Byrrah, the guy I know I knocked out good enough for an at least 2 hour period, was back at it again! He tackled Namorita to the floor, and punched at her furiously. That wasn't the worst of it, Namorita was strong enough to where she could handle herself against a depowered Byrrah….but that's the thing….Byrrah was repowering!

I didn't see much of it. Krang smacked me sideways with a backhand, and opened fire on me with a desperate, but way stronger than normal, Unibeam blast. I managed to raise a barrier around myself, but that wasn't really a victory in the grand scheme of things. I knew it was definitely Llyra who was repowering Byrrah. Don't know how she was doing it, but that's magic for ya. For some reason, it was working from the ground up. Yeah, I don't get it either, but Byrrah had glowing thighs that were rising to his chest. Me and Namorita couldn't keep this up forever; the longer we fought, the more Atlanteans were dying in the battlefield. I had to take a piece off the board….permanently. I summoned one of my throwing knives, and charged it with a handful of fire.

"_God, forgive me," _I prayed. "_I have to end this."_

I dropped my barrier, while at the same time, moving out of the way of Krang's Unibeam, and flew as fast as I could into his gut. While I propelled him into the wall, I flicked my throwing knife through my right hand, took a quick half sec to gauge the target, and threw the knife at Byrrah's head. I immediately tried to justify my actions in my head. For starters, Byrrah was setting up to kill Namorita. He had somehow grabbed her trident, and was about to bring it down into her neck. Also, like I said, I had to end this. Still, I didn't have the stomach to watch the fruits of my labor, and quickly turned away. I heard a stomach churning SHILK! sound, followed my the muffled THOOM!, that was Byrrah's head turning into chunks.

Even though it all happened in the span of a few seconds, the amount of guilt and revulsion I felt, made it seem like it was forever. The piranhaoids were almost like rapid dogs, so while I didn't enjoy killing them, I could at least not lose any sleep over it. Byrrah on the other hand was a person, a life that I had personally snuffed out. Granted, we exchanged no words between each other, and he was no better than his buddy, but he was still a person. I had tried to be cool with the fact that killing would be a thing I would have to do as a part of Delta Force, but up until now, I was never in a position that involved killing actual people. Now that I had, I would never be able to distance that away from myself. No matter how many justifiable reasons you could throw at me, it would never change the fact that I had killed a person. I was not okay with that.

Krang reacted in a totally unpredicted way; or unpredicted for me at least. He shouted "NOOOOO!", and I felt a shocking amount of genuine grief being expressed. I never even thought of it, what with his delusions of grandeur, and being a total jerk face, but Krang actually cared about Byrrah. I didn't think it was possible for him to care about anything other than his own self interest, which made me feel all the more awful for Byrrah's death. Forget the mission, I had assumed Krang was a monster that was incapable of feeling anything, that he was just another sociopath who could care less about anything that wasn't beneficial to his own self interests. In doing so, I had hurt him more than a weapon ever could.

I felt him grab my hair, yank it up, and punch me so hard in the face, I was knocked back a good 20 feet. If it wasn't for my Sun Form providing barely enough protection, my face would've been shattered.

"YOU BITCH!" Krang roared at me, as he released what was unquestionably the most powerful Unibeam blast he every shot.

In a different context, this might've been justified. I had killed his….friend I guess? But like I said, Krang had absolutely no moral high ground in this situation. He was still advocating mass murder, so that he could exact even bigger mass murder. Plus, and I know this is vain, but he grabbed and pulled my hair! There is only one instance in which i'd ever be ok with hair pulling, and this was so...not...it! All of my inner turmoil, anger, grief, indignation, lingering desire for revenge, all of it exploded to the surface like a powder keg going off. I pulled out my Sun Shields, the gadget that enhanced my blasts, and after a genuine roar of being pissed off, and so absolutely done with this, I unleashed an emotionally charged blast strong enough to level a battleship. The great thing about my powers were that, especially when I wanted them to be, they were both light and heat based, meaning that Krang's Unibeam was about as threatening as a sleeping kitten. Our blasts collided for a total of three seconds, before mine's steamrolled over his, and bulldozed him through several walls.

"_Stop Llyra!" _I thought to Namorita, who I hoped wasn't too traumatized that she had someone killed horribly directly on top of her. "_I'll be back!"_

I didn't wait to hear her reply, and zoomed after Krang.

I found him seven walls later, his body aura still functional, but only just. He was up, but I didn't give him the chance to swing. I went into Comet Speed, turned on my Blazing Sun Form, and for the next few seconds, punched, and kicked him hundreds of times over, until his aura was completely spent. I could've easily knocked him out, but I was in a really dark place emotionally, and still wanted him to suffer for being absolutely awful. I did something that was….well, f*(#^% up; no other way to put it.

I imagined a ball of light in his stomach. Because of his previously functioning aura, I doubt I could've had this much influence beforehand, and to be honest, i've never really tried to do this sort of thing. Sure enough, I felt the small sphere inside of him, and what went around was about to come around hard. I willed the light to spread to every part of his body, creating a sort of map to sense his important organs, arteries and veins. After a half sec to get acquainted to his anatomy, I willed the light to harden, and burst of of Krang's body, as spikes!

Yup, I impaled Krang at least two dozen times from the inside out. Like I said, I didn't target any vital organs, but arms, hands, feet, certain parts of the legs and torso, those were all fair game. To say that Krang roared in pain is not even half of the picture; there are certain ways people scream that you can never comprehend unless you've heard them in person, and Krang's outright wail of torment was among that number. He drifted to the ground, and I made the spikes disappear. A big part of me wanted to leave Krang the way he was, but in the state he was in, he'd probably bleed out. Instead, I sang "Heart Attack" by Demi Lovato, and healed him just enough to where he wasn't in any danger of dying, but not nearly well enough to where he could even move a muscle. He looked at me with a mix of pure rage, and savage grief, and even I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"I've been thinking about what you said, Krang," I said, kneeling next to him. "And yes, you're right. Atlantis even under the best of circumstances is not the ideal race of co-existence, but they can be better, they have a hope of improving. Furthermore, they deserve that chance to improve, Namor deserves that chance, because at the very least, I know they have the potential for a better future."

Krang didn't respond; probably didn't see the point of it, now that he was beaten. I pulled out the necklace I took from Janus, and Krang's eyes widened.

"Recognize it?" I asked him, as I unfastened the arrow. "I was gonna kill you with it, use it as some form of poetic justice. Then again, that seems to have already been done, and i've had more than enough killing for one lifetime."

I ruthlessly jammed the arrow into his palm, and punched him out before he could scream. What? I said I wouldn't kill him. I didn't.

The next second, a huge explosion of something erupted in the throne room.

"_SUNBIRD!" _Namorita roared in my head. "_I NEED SOME ASSISTANCE!"_

I sighed. Gotta do everything myself, huh?

"_On my way!" _I thought back to her.

I was expecting something alarming, but manageable. Something that was slightly beyond Namorita's power to deal with, but right up my alley. I did not expect a freaking black hole covering the entire throne room. No, really, the entire room was drowning in some sort of liquidy, shadowy flame! As I flew through it, every nerve of my body quivered in a sudden coldness. Seeing as I don't get cold anymore, that said something. The flames seemed sentient, aggressive, pure evil. I heard screams, roars, wails, growls, all of which were gonna add to the nightmares i'd end up having later on. I fully expected the shadows to eat me alive, to tear right into my soul and painfully consume me…..yet they didn't. Oh, they wanted to! While they didn't explicitly say so, it felt like a group of lions were circling me from all sides, chomping at the bit to eat me alive. On a curiousity hunch, I looked at my arms, and was surprised to find that I was in my Blazing Sun Form. Usually I have to make a conscious decision to tap into that, but now it was automatic. In any case, I was grateful, because the shadows stayed away from me like I was the plague.

I looked around for Namorita, this is where being in an ungodly huge throne room really bites, but only saw two things in this sea of darkness. The first was some kind of blue/green cocoon that kept fading between the black haze. The other was a golden bonfire that was my everlasting fire spear. I made my spear fly back to me, flew over to Namorita, and quickly raised a barrier over us. She dropped her barrier, and collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath. Whatever she was did, it drained the heck out of her.

"You had one job!" I shouted at her. "One job!"

"S-shut…..up!" she gasped at me. "J-just….finish...this!"

Poor woman was so out of it. Guess it was up to me. Just little Sunbird, on her own, against a wall of darkness thick enough to devour a mall. Huh…...good thing I had my spear!

All that fire I had built up in my spear, I knew I was saving it for something. While I couldn't exactly use Heaven's Wrath, there was nothing to aim at, I could still use it in a different way. I slammed my spear into the floor, and willed all of the fire around it to explode outside of the barrier, and OH MY GOD!

I remember a few years ago when me and my parents went over to my uncle Jeffrey's place in the country for a July 4th cookout. That night, uncle Jeffrey had a barn full of fireworks ready, and we were gonna have an awesome time setting them off. Unfortunately, due to a faulty lighting system in the barn, a fuse lit a bit too early, and a few seconds later, he was running like heck, yelling a stream of cuss words so bad, my mom actually covered my ears. The barn quite literally exploded in an epic fireworks display. A rainbow of explosions, firecrackers, whizzing rockets, etc., leveled the place, but it was still so much fun to watch! I remember yelling, laughing, and jumping, while my uncle and Dad cussed and fussed at each other! What I was doing now, was at least 10X that. Sure it was only as a golden blaze, but the quick change from darkness to light was so sudden, i'm pretty sure even God was jealous.

Seeing it in action, was literally like night and day fighting one another. My fire slowly repelled the seemingly endless darkness, but the rolling blackness fought back, mixing and clashing with it; even taking the shapes of various mythological monsters. Again, my nightmares would be legendary! I managed to fight the darkness tooth n' nail, until I managed to get a solid grip on the entire first half of the room. I kept the wall of fire constantly clashing against the darkness, until I found the opportunity to turn it into the mother of all constructs. I imagined the fire taking the shape of a giant bird, a Pidgeot to be precise, the size and width a battleship; like I said, this was a really, really big throne room! I willed my Sunbird construct, like I was gonna name it anything else, to flap it wings in big powerful strokes, spreading enough fire to melt an airport. For the most part, this was working. The darkness was getting slowly getting pushed back, but it wasn't enough. It was like trying to push back overflowing water with my feet, the water was technically receding, but without a towel to soak it up, it would come back around.

I struggled with the darkness for another good minute, using, sustaining, and expending massive amounts of solar energy. Yet, this darkness refused to give in; whatever it's weakness was, raw light and heat was not it. It seemed like the best I could hope for, was a stalemate, but in the span of another half minute, the darkness started to push back a lot more. More than that, I could hear it wailing. Not in rage, and anger though, but pain; somehow, I was doing something that was hurting it. I frantically started thinking of what the silver bullet was, what it could be. What was I adding to the fire that made it the bane of the existence of this darkness? About ten seconds later, I finally got it, and the answer was so simple, I couldn't believe I didn't think of it sooner!

Under my breath, but with all of my involuntary effort, I was humming the Pokemon Theme. When I hum, sing, whatever, I can pour certain emotions into them, and make them resonate through an environment, so long as it's of living organisms. This darkness was alive, and it fed on hate, anger, and all that other bad stuff. I was humming a song of comfort, of courage, the promise that tomorrow would better. In other words, to beat this darkness, all I had to do was kill it with kindness!

"_Hang tight!" _I thought to Namorita. "_I know how to beat this!"_

I went through the barrier, but kept it up for Namorita. I then flew directly into my Sunbird construct, and after giving it new, more intense fire, I fanned the flames out, and at the top of my lungs, sang "Dare You" by Hardwell. God, I loved that song! I remember coming across it last year as, I was building a playlist on YouTube to do my English paper to. While scrolling and listening through an avalanche of theme songs, Disney songs, classic songs, instrumentals, and EDM's, I finally happened on that song. On a side note, I probably spent at least two hours not actually getting any work done, which might've been a problem if I wasn't already working on it a week in advance. Listening to the song made me light up; literally, it was only a week after I got my powers, and I was still learning where the on/off switch was. Every time the song played happiness, joy, and a love of being myself, swelled inside of me. I felt like I could lift planets, leap to the moon, and break through any obstacle put in my path! You better believe I put every ounce of that raw positive energy into every note I sang, made it resonate through every blast of flame, and give the biggest middle finger to the darkness I could. Heck, the change wasn't slow, or gradual, but immediate and unstoppable! In five seconds, the darkness was pushed back and was condensing to the throne. I pushed harder, willing my flames to coral the darkness, and force it to a singular spot, before bringing out the big finisher. I took back all of the flames that were encompassing the throne room, swirled it around myself, and shot it back out in a massive energy blast, that had a flaming screeching bird head at the tip off it. The blast obliterated the small glob of shadow, leaving only Llyra left. I wasted no time, and flew after her, a fist ready for her face. At the last second though, she raised a small portion of the darkness again, and shaped it into some kind of magic shield; I know it was magic because it was three circles inside of each other, with runes and symbols that would probably give Hermione Granger a brain freeze. One punch rattled the shield's foundation, and the following one smashed it completely, albeit in a big inky explosion. By the time I had recovered, Llyra was gone. I looked around to make sure she wasn't behind me or anything, villains are notorious for behind your back strikes. Nope, she turned turned tail and swam.

I flew over to Namorita, and sang a few notes over her, giving her back all the energy she had used up. As I sang, I noticed something rather troubling. While it may not have seemed like it, pre Sunbird/darkness fight, the water was littered in bodies, and limbs, with enough blood to put a school of sharks into a frenzy. Afterwards, all the bodies and blood were gone, like somebody scrubbed the place clean. Whether or not I cremated them, or if they were absorbed by the darkness, that was up for debate. I just found it a bit off putting that so much death and carnage could be swept under the rug so quickly.

Anyway, after I gave Namorita all the energies, she got up, gave me a quick thank you, and rushed to the throne.

"So what happens now?" I asked her.

"I have to divert the sea life to our side," she responded, conjuring green runes, and glyphs that circled around her. "Attuma has been leaning on his sea monsters, and piranhaoids to win him the day. While I can't control all of them, I can at least nudge most of the sharks, octopi, eels, etc., to fight for us. I'll need full concentration, and your protection."

"Why?!" I asked her. "We won here! I need to help my team!"

"No! They have a job to do, yours is not done yet. Please, I can't defend myself, and turn the tide of the battle at the same time. I can't be sure if more enemies won't attack. I need your help, Sunbird."

Dang it! Sometimes I hate being nice!

"Fine," I said. "Alright, i'll stay."

"Thank you," Namorita responded. "Don't worry, if the brown haired one is any indication, your friends are doing just fine."

I smiled, and turned to the face the throne room doors. If anything WAS coming, it was not getting past me.


	19. Chapter 19: One Crazy Water Fight

**Chapter 19: One Crazy Water Fight**

(Grant's Perspective)

So let's recap here, ladies and gentleman! We're under the freaking ocean, Atlantis is under attack, Attuma's like half a step away from getting the Stone of Poseidon, and a handful of high school newbie mutants half to turn the tide of a whole war. Oh, and assuming we succeed, there's no guarantee Namor will let us take the stone with us. Life is a roller coaster.

After getting zapped through yet another transporter, Storm-Lord, Oroco, and I were at the top of Atlantis' skyscraper tall, Great Wall of China long, guard wall. The jarring effects of getting transported were even more jarring considering we basically got transported into a shooting range where the guns were basically tanks! Literally, with only 20ft of space from each other, laser cannons that looked like a mix between tridents and crossbows lined the entire wall. They were shooting out into the water, at the glow stick dragons, sea serpents, and Antarctic Leviathans; couldn't think of anything clever to call those….things. Speaking of the battle, everything was going to $#!+ for Atlantis! With a mix of both my enhanced vision and ability to sense anything touching earth, I can totally do that, I deduced the fact that Atlantis was getting utterly owned. That crescent moon maneuvering? Yeah, that was doing wonders for the other team, who were basically on the verge of washing over the Atlanteans like a tidal wave. The sea creatures were involved over the battle, which seemed a bit odd to me, before I realized the monsters were trying to get over the wall and into the city. The only other thing that was worth noticing, was Namor fighting it out with Attuma. From what Storm-Lord described, Namor was slowly but surely losing his grip on the fight, and it was showing like so hard. Attuma's blue Super Saiyan glow was almost as big as Namor's, and while Namor was definitely putting in work, ya boy Attuma was putting in at least twice as much. Part of me wanted to help the poor guy, but I had to focus on the main battle here.

"ALAS!" Oroco shouted above the laser cannons. "THE BATTLE FARES WORSE, WE MUST MOVE QUICKLY!"

He put his hands to his temples, closed his eyes. Nothing happened at all, but Oroco seemed pretty satisfied with ten seconds of doing f*(# all.

"THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" Jason yelled at him.

"ASSERTING MY AUTHORITY!" Oroco yelled back at him. "THROUGH OUR SHARED TELEPATHY, THE ARMY OF ATLANTIS ARE AWARE OF MY PROMOTION!"

Oroco swam over to the nearest cannon, and yanked the Atlantean who was occupying it off of his seat!

"YOU'VE BEEN RELIEVED OF YOUR DUTY!" He shouted at the poor guy. "DRAW YOUR SWORD, AND GET INTO THE FIGHT!"

The guy practically tripped over himself as he drew his sword, and swam down the wall.

"YOU, LORD OF STORMS!" Oroco yelled at Storm-Lord. "FILL THE TURRET WITH YOUR POWER!

Storm-Lord got in the cannon, put his hands on the two pads, and gave them a jump. The cannon lit up with voltage, making a whole mess of pops and cracks.

"WHOA!" Storm-Lord shouted. "INTENSE! HOW DO I WORK THIS THING!?"

"THE PADS HAVE LINKED YOUR CEREBRAL CORTEX TO THE TURRET." Oroco said. "YOU NEED ONLY THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, AND IT WILL BE DONE!"

Storm-Lord tested this out, and took aim at a nearby Sea Serpent, turning it to dust in one quick shot.

"_Dude!" _he thought to me. "_I like this thing!"_

"_You would!" _I thought back to him.

"GEO-TITAN!" Oroco shouted at me. "YOU PROMISED THE ABILITY TO DESTROY ARMIES! DISPLAY THAT ABILITY NOW!"

"OK, SERGEANT SHOUTS A LOT!" I yelled back at him. "BY THE WAY, I HAVE A REALLY GOOD SENSE OF HEARING, YOU DON'T GOTTA SHOUT AT ME! ANYWAY, I'M ON IT; IF YOU NEED ANY SPECIAL REQUESTS, JUST ASK!"

I summoned my axe, and flew towards the epic on epic battle.

"_Gaea?" _I asked her on the way down. "_Can I control enough Geo-Force to stretch an entire nation?"_

"_As far as Atlantis?" _she responded. "_Yes. Don't over exert yourself though, you only need to use about 1% of the Geo-Force; use the silt to sense where your enemies are, and strike them down accordingly."_

"_Thanks for the tip, coach! Now let's get to work!"_

I summoned a huge amount of G-Force around myself, shaped it into a nuke, and flew out into the water. I flew straight into the wave of enemies, not with the Atlanteans, straight into the heart of the enemy onslaught, where the battle hadn't even reached them yet. I landed smack dab into the center of their formation, and let my nuke construct go off, incinerating well over 500 of Byrrah's forces. I disregarded the ring of death around me, tapped into Blitz Extreme, and touched the silt with my hands. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the huge amount of land around me, getting my bearings. I felt as far as the limits of Atlantis, and the extent of the oncoming forces of Attuma. By rough estimate, I was processing at least one million square feet of land, which may sound like a lot, because it is. After I took a few to get accustomed to the feel of it, I targeted a random piranhaoid, about 1,000 miles northeast of me, and sparked a small bit of G-Force under it, killing the poor sap before he knew what hit him. I did that a few more times, targeting random enemies, until I found the minimum amount of G-Force necessary to kill a person. I'll admit, that's more than a little f*(#^&amp; up that I used living beings as guinea pigs, but at this moment in time, I kinda didn't care. No, really, I was going through a low point in my emotional roller coaster, courtesy of Dirt Mother herself; right now, I was struggling to just give a $#!+ about anything. Anyway, after I got my game plan set up, I summoned my axe, switched it into spear mode, and set it ablaze with G-Force. From there it was a bloodbath.

Across the crescent formation, thousands of G-Force blasts went off at once, and continued to keep going off. In less than 10 seconds, almost 20,000 of Attuma's soldiers were dead. See, I was using this strategy where I recycled the leftover energy of a blast, and used it to target and destroy another nearby enemy. This may sound hard, but I had years to master stuff like this in the Geo-Nexus. For me, this was like flicking a lighter on and off. While that was going on, I was also wreaking havoc with my axe-spear. As the enemies piled on, all I had to do was swing my spear back and forth, taking dozens upon dozens of piranhaoids, barbarian looking Atlanteans, and even occasional sea monsters down for the count. Granted, I couldn't cover my back, but my All-Metal did that for me just fine. Yeah, while I was mowing down the bad guys, I summoned my All-Metal, and wrapped it around my armor. I didn't need the extra protection. From what I was sensing, their weapons were made of some type of enchanted Gold/Titanium alloy, which, even with the hocus pocus, wouldn't so much as bruise my skin. Still, it might damage the suit, and the last thing I wanted was Mrs. Kennedy chewing me out for damaging my armor again. The All-Metal would help save me some grief. More important though, as I used it in sync with my Geo-Sight, official name, I broke off several hundred small shards, and willed them to fly around rapidly, taking down all of the enemies out of my line of natural sight.

For like ten minutes, I went all Spartan Jason Voorhees on the battlefield. Every swing of my axe was the death of at least a dozen enemy soldiers. Every spare thought meant a thousand more kills to the toll, and I thought a lot. My super move though? That was some next level stuff! Periodically through the fight, after I was satisfied with the G-Force I had fed to my spear, I would shrink it back down to axe size, and hurl it as hard as I could deep into the oncoming enemy ranks. Every time I did this, I created a trench of carnage that stretched out for hundreds of miles. Also, when the axe had reached the end of it's rope, I willed the built up G-Force to go boom! Yeah, i'm not gonna pretend to be completely all good on this one; I may have been helping out the good guys, I so totally had to get Namor's autograph, but i'm almost certain nobody in existence has ever killed as many people as I currently was. Hell, if Oroco screaming "KEEP IT UP BOY, THE TIDE IS TURNING!", as well as his machine gunning of insults and curses at Attuma was any indication, I was doing my job relatively well. Couldn't count Storm-Lord out of the highlights reel though. While he wasn't exactly doing the heavy lifting of the fighting, the dude was absolutely a monster at the sniping game. From a realistic standpoint, no matter how big the sea serpents were, do you have any idea how hard it would be to hit them from so far away with such narrow shots? If you can't, imagine trying to peg a flying piece of string by throwing a toothpick. And just like that, I have a bet to make against Hawkeye! Anyway, Storm-Lord proved up to the challenge, and nailed them all in one shot with his lightning blasts. The dragons were easy enough for him to hit too, and my oh my, those poor leviathans! It wasn't really the fact that he was able to hit them, rather than what he did to them once he made contact. First off, he only every shot into their mouths; three to five bolts at a time. Even with that thing basically swallowing enough voltage to power a trillion iPhones, it was still big enough to where it wasn't in any real danger….or so I thought. Less than two seconds later, the Leviathan started to convulse violently, and lightning bolts started coming out of it, like he had swallowed a thunderstorm. After that, it was all downhill for that sucker. So yeah, I think it's safe to say that Storm-Lord had the high game all covered. Between the two of us, and of course Sunbird's hostile re-takeover operation, this was gonna be a breeze!

For the next ten minutes or so, it actually was. My G-Force manipulation had broke through enough of the crescent formation to where the defending Atlanteans were gradually starting to gain more ground. In fact, Oroco started taking me up on my offer, and made some special request to where my G-Force bursts were needed. I couldn't exactly form a complete picture of what he was trying to do, but from the look of it, he was having me create small pockets of space where the Atlanteans could gain footholds, and hold the line. He also instructed every other turret shooters to redirect their fire at the heart of the enemy advancement, making my job just a little easier. With their forces being divided, sandwiched, and thinned out where it really counted, Atlantis finally had a chance of not getting totally wrecked. So, naturally, this is where the fun really starts for me. See, while I was hacking, slashing, and bombing to my heart content, I was keeping tabs on Attuma and Namor too. First off, between the laser blasts, Oroco's yelling, Storm-Lord losing his mind over how awesome his cannon was, and the sound of battle all around me, do you have any idea how hard it was to signal out that one specific sound?! Answer: super, ultra, mega hard! After the frustration of trying to single them out, I managed to get some pretty important information off of the fight. Well, besides the fact that him and Namor were still beating the $#!+ out of each other.

"Tiger Shark!" Attuma yelled, once you removed all of the grunts. "Report, why are our forces being driven back?!

I made my hearing open up to the entirety of the expanse of the battle, searching for a reply that would match the question.

"Unclear, Lord Attuma!" a raspy voice said. "For all I know, it could be some sort of beast,or magic Namor has suddenly employed!"

"It must be the former, all of Namor's arcane advantages lie up here with me. What is the creature doing?! What might does it possess that could pose a threat to entire legions?!"

"Its power manifests in the form of some kind of energy that is both fire and lightning! It is also proven to be strong enough to singlehandedly kill thousands of our troops!"

"Where are you?!"

"Fighting in the south with the the 21st legion. We are nearing the wall, despite heavy interference!"

"Belay your role in the attack! Orka! Tyrak! You will both join Tiger Shark on this mission! Destroy the beast before he becomes a nuisance!

I was actually kinda flattered that Attuma called me a beast, but having a target on my head put a huge dampener on that compliment. I heard three distinct booms, all of which were converging on my location.

"_Geo-Titan?" _Gaea thought to me.

"_I know, G," _ I thought back to her. "_New playmates."_

The first attack was so easy to counter, I had to keep myself from laughing. As one of the goons behind me got closer, I did a backflip over him, created a speeding car construct, a Lamborghini to be specific, and plowed him into like 100 of his allies. He'd be fine. Even though I didn't get a good look at him, I could see that he had an energy barrier around him; meaning this was either gonna be really long and hard, or really long and fun. The two other goons who were comin' in for a swing were approaching from my right and my left. I took a quick half second to get a look at them, and my weren't they a colorful bunch! They both had blue skin, which was kinda the popular trend for underwater people. The one coming from the left was kinda burly, and wore a gold chainmail suit under a purple tunic, with a purple war helmet similar to Thor's, but with fish fins. On an off note, his blue body shield clashed with his getup, this guy really needed to take a class on style. He had all white eyes, sharp teeth, and was coming at me with a one bladed long axe, made of the same enchanted gold/titanium alloy that seemed to be the default weapon choice for underwater people. In other words, unless he had a hidden awesome power, he was no threat at all. The other guy coming at me was a blue version of what you'd get if you mashed the Big Show with a gorilla, and fed it steroids. Seriously, this guy, even without his body shield, was probably strong enough to replace two entire team's worth of linebackers. His arms were bigger than me, and he had feet big enough to crush cars. He'd actually be worth a decent fright, if he didn't look so ridiculous. His entire body was a dark shade of blue, while his face was more of a sky blue, making me laugh in my head, Also, his face literally looked like it was pasted onto the front of his head! Other than that, he had golden spikes growing out of the circumference of his face. Sure, why not? And he was wearing a white wrestling suit, with a golden belt. So in addition to looking like a wrestler, he was also wearing a belt that made him look like World Heavyweight Champion?! Oh man, this guy was a riot, I was gonna feel a little bad about kicking his ass! Anyway, after getting acquainted to my attackers, I decided to give them a little greeting G-Force style. I trapped them both in G-Force energy balls, and willed the balls to collide and merge together. I hit them as hard as I could with my spear, and sent them flying into their other friend, sending them on another smash through hundreds more of their allies. I rocketed after them, and found the three stooges in a crater bumbling and shuffling over each other. I came in hard with my spear, not in a mood to take any prisoners, and brought it down hard on top of the fish friends. Well, almost sorta kinda. At the last second, Tiger Shark darted away from the spear, and the guy in gold and purple blocked the strike with way less effort than I thought he'd need. By the way, if you're wondering, Tiger Shark was some guy in orange and black spandex that had teeth designs going up the center of his suit. He also had black gloves and boots, talons extending from his hands, and a mask that had a huge shark fin that ran all the way down to his back. In short, he looked stupid as $#!+. Anyway, after golden boy, less than me golden, blocked my strike, Tiger Shark came in for a bite, only to get planted to the ground with a bolt of G-Force. Blue King Kong roared and charged at me, which I cut short with a G-Force charged reverse kick to his chest, sending him careening into more enemy soldiers. Meanwhile, golden boy was still struggling under my axe. Again, he was strong enough to block my hits, but by the looks of it, not strong enough to take me, even if my attention was mile away. I grabbed his axe, and yanked it and him up.

"Don't worry bro!" I said before punching him hard in gut, and sending him sprawling away with a front kick. "Plenty of love to go around!"

"_Stop playing around, boy!" _Gaea yelled at me. "_Need I remind you that you're fighting a war?!"_

"_Hypocrite!" _I thought back to her as I got ready for Tiger Shark and friends to return. "_If I had a dime for every quip you said last night-"_

"_Just hush, and fight! Oh, and the one called Tiger Shark has Adamantium teeth; watch out for that!"_

As the three of them came at me again, I heard Tiger Shark, who was the group leader, instruct his crew to a would be, not even on their best day, victory.

"Orka!" he yelled at the big blue. "Attack his right flank and restrain him! Tyrak, go for his front, cleave him in two! I'll bite a chunk out of his neck!"

This guy wouldn't be winning any medals for best strategy any time soon.

I dismantled their attack almost instantly, dodging Orka's tackle, and after swinging him around by his suit, threw him into Tyrak. That was two down, and since Tiger Shark got cold feet now that his plan was f*(# %, I took it upon myself to go after him myself. Faster than he could swim away, I punched him hard in the mouth, kneed him under his chin, and hammer punched him into the ground. I landed hard on top of him, and doused him with a continuous wave of G-Force.

One thing to notice was that it didn't take anything at all to fight these guys while keeping up my G-Force deterrent for the rest of the battle. As I was blasting away at Tiger Shark, I was still simultaneously singeing the f*(# out of thousands of enemy soldiers. To put it simple, this was the equivalent of listening to music, actually paying attention to the lyrics, while reading a book. I hear some people can't do it, but ever since the iPod came out, I was able to do it since junior high. Even more to my advantage, because Storm-Lord and the rest of the firing squad had almost decimated the overhead sea monsters, a good chunk of the cannons were diverting their fire power to the far end of the battle, just fifty miles away from where I was. What this meant, was that I didn't have to focus all that hard on keeping up the G-Force deterrent anyway. With the cannons thinning out the ranks of Attuma's army anyway, I could pull back just a bit, and focus all the more on pounding these losers into the ground.

While I was blasting at Tiger Shark, my body went into Timeout, and I turned around to see Orka about to tackle me again. As I smashed my fist into his face as hard a I could, I tried wrapping my mind around the concept of why every bad guy ever always went for the tackle, rather than something less….stupid. I guess I couldn't talk so much, though; my first action after being confronted with an army of robots, was to charge in with no plan at all. Anyway, the force of my punch was so strong, it created a 360 degree wave that blew away another handful of enemy soldiers. That's the other thing, at the degree of intensity that we were fighting at, the surrounding enemy soldiers were either getting crushed, steamrolled, blown away, or were straight up actively trying to avoid the fight. Tyrak swam in fast for a strong swing to my head, resulting in him getting punted away after I yanked his axe away from him, and threw it as far away as I could. I'm the only one who gets to have an axe around here. I refocused on Orka, and began to put the ultimate smackdown on him with hard blows to the gut, face, as well as precise hits and kicks to his pressure points and joints. Each hit was enough to shatter an elephant's skull, but Orka had the saving grace of that body shield to protect him. At first I thought all he had to him was "strength", but a quick shoulder block from him proved he had some speed to him as well. I followed up with a roundhouse kick to his head, and used the remaining momentum to summon my axe, hitting him in the face again. I was kinda sorta hoping there'd be a bit more of a slicing reaction from his face, but that's body shields for ya. As was such, Orka just buckled a bit. This guy could take a hit. I responded by charging my axe with some G-Force, and slammed it on top of his head. He face planted into the dirt. At this point, Tiger Shark was just starting getting back into the game, though not a good note. He tried for the same old strategy of barreling into me, but he looked great doing it, his swimming form was fantastic. He managed to get a foot away from me, before I willed the All-Metal to detach from my armor, and reform into a solid wall, just in time for him to smack into it at 90 mph. My biggest regret was that I didn't have my phone on me; the sound his head made against the multi colored bricks needed to be my ringtone! I dismissed the All-Metal back to the Geo-Nexus, I think, shot my axe chain out, whipped it around his neck, and yanked Tiger Shark toward a knuckle sandwich, compliments of chef me. He hit the dirt again, but Orka got up to pick up the slack. Again, he was met with a brutal punch, kick, and swing of the axe combo, which looked so good, even Tiger Shark wanted a piece of the fun. He rushed into me with a tackle that I let happen, only for me to roll with the momentum, pin him to the ground, and deck him in the head with a hard G-Force charged punch. I sensed Orka trying to barrel into me, but stopped him cold with an uppercut to the jaw, followed by a spinning kick to the side of his head, and blasting him away with a huge blast of G-Force from my eyes. While, this was going on, Tyrak, who had finally recovered after getting punched two miles away, was just finally getting back in range of the fight. Without even looking at him, I diverted his trajectory with a well placed fist construct that shot into his stomach at the speed of a freight train. As I was punching and kicking away at Orka and Tiger Shark, I created a laser cannon construct at such an angle, that it would blast Tyrak into the fight, and let it rip. The boom of the canon going off was impossible to miss, even in the middle of all of the mass ruckus. Hell, the thing was so bright, you'd have to be blind not to see it. Unfortunately for Orka, and Tiger Shark, I cranked up the gravity to about 5X the earth's gravity just around their feet; they couldn't move for $#!+. I flew out of the way of the blast, and enjoyed the fireworks display. For reference, the blast was big enough to leave a crater where the statue of liberty used to be. And before you ask me why I didn't just use this to waste Attuma's army, keep in mind, I only just now got the opportunity to use this much spare G-Force in one go. Plus, now that the firing squad was on damage control for me, there was no need. Good enough for ya? Too bad, it's all you got. Anyway, I turned the light show off after a good ten seconds and got reacquainted with my opponents. As far as I could tell, the blast didn't hurt them too bad, but they were definitely rocked.

"How is it possible?" Orka muttered.

"Ughr," Tyrak groaned.

"What manner of child can wield such power?" Tiger Shark asked himself.

"First off," I spoke loud enough for them to hear me. "I'm only three months away from being old enough to vote; not that I care about politics anyway! Name's Geo-Titan, and you guys are soooo done for!"

Underwater or not, bad guys never liked to be talked down to, especially by a "kid". They all rushed me at once, and they were absolutely adorable!

Real talk, if these guys weren't protected by their magic ocean god aura, they'd have broken necks in five seconds. As strong as they were underwater, my speed and skill easily outclassed them; they never laid a single hit on me. Tiger Shark rushed in for a slash with his claws, only for me to dodge it, and deck him across the face with a G-Force charged fist. While he was tumbling away, I rushed into Orka's stomach with a hard knee, came up with a hammer uppercut to his chin, and finished it off with a dropkick to his chest, sending him tumbling backwards. Admittedly, this left me open for a swing from Tyrak, but I was easily able to catch the punch, twist his wrist, and bring my elbow down hard on his arm. While his body shield prevented me from actually fracturing any bones, disappointing yes, I settled for a chop to the throat, followed by decking him in the face. Tyrak hit the dirt hard, but Tiger Shark and Okra were back up to take his place. For probably a good five minutes, it was just a straight up beat down fest. Despite these guys having a numbers advantage, not to mention probably having the strength advantage collectively, they were absolutely dead in the water; pun totally intended. Their plan, always seemed to be about rushing me, and desperately trying to either punch me a lot, or pin me to the ground. None of that ever worked. Tiger Shark was fast, and to some degree strong, but he could never reign it in enough to use it to his advantage. Every time he rushed at me, i'd either side step and plant him to the ground with a G-Force bolt, or let him rush into a fist, and throw him back at his friends. Orka on the other hand was all strength, no speed, and absolutely no skill. I almost felt like I was bullying him to be honest. Every swing was strong, but too wild and too slow to matter. Hell, I didn't even bother blocking, I just flew around and under his swings and made him suffer for it with so many punches and kicks to the head, chest, and back. Tyrak, to put it short, sucked in all the areas, and I had so much fun punching his stupid face in. The only thing I could give them credit on was their consistency, the guys were the epitome of perseverance. Still, they at least gave me something to do; there wasn't a single second where I wasn't punching, kicking, or blasting at someone.

"_I'm so proud of myself," _Gaea thought to me. "_I am such an amazing teacher!"_

"_Pat yourself on the back later, G!" _I thought back to her. "_Give me some help here, how do I beat this power source?"_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_With Venom and Goblin, it was simple. Get the stone, cut the power source off at its core. These guys don't have a stone, so do I just beat them silly until they stop glowing?"_

"_Basically."_

"_Say what?!"_

"_Yes, you heard me correct. What you have here is an unfortunate bottom of the chain scenario. The witch Llyra is syphoning energy from the Stone of Poseidon, and feeding it to your enemies. Keep in mind, the stone is a manifestation of Poseidon's power, the entire ocean."_

"_I can defeat an ocean?"_

"_Not all of them, not now, but that's not the point. The strength these three are at collectively rank close to the power of two and a half oceans."_

"_Because that's sooo much better."_

"_Actually, it is. Until your friend disposes of their power supplier they'll always have a source to draw from, but that does not mean their power can't be exhausted for a time. Their aura's take most of the damage for them, but they can still be depleted. Take Iron Man for example, if you break the suit, and attack the body before the armor can repair, you win the fight."_

"_So, just punch and blast them until they stop glowing, then bring the axe down?"_

"_Exactly. At your current strength, if you use your powers right, and you have the creativity for it, you can physically shut their power auras down. Think of it like that silly little game you love playing. You have to get past the defensive line, and sack the opposing thrower before they have the chance to pass the ball. Speaking of which, football is an insipid name for a sport that has almost no kicking in it._

"_I'll pretend I didn't hear that last bit."_

Of course, I was still kicking some major ass, but now with an actual game plan to go on, it was time to crank the dials up to 20! I pounded the three stooges for a few more seconds, before creating a dome of G-Force the size of a mansion. I willed the gravity inside the dome to crank up to X10, and summoned my All-Metal. I split it into two parts, and launched the globs at Tiger Shark and Tyrak. The globs constructed into life size forms of Black Widow and Thor respectively, and after giving them a full tank of G-Force, I willed them to handle my light work. Meanwhile, I summoned my axe, activated my G-Blazer, and had at it with Orka.

On a semi positive note for him, I wasn't really using all that much of my super speed; I turned up the gravity to cover for that. When I was emphasizing speed, I didn't have enough time to actually put a great deal of power into my swings. Now, I was swinging full force at Orka with my axe and fist; each swing powerful enough to crack a mountain. Even though I ditched most of the speed advantage, I was still twice as fast as Orka, and even then I was still overkilling him by the barrel loads. The G-Force dome we were in? I willed the inside of it to blast dozens of bolts at a time in every direction, hitting Orka and friends like they were lightning rods. This kept them all off balance, and made it easier for my Avengers doubles to lay the smackdown on Tiger Shark and Tyrak. Speaking of which, it was still not worth even half of my concentration to juggle my fight, managing the G-Force dome, the extra gravity, and controlling them at the same time. It was kinda one of those things where you listen to music, do your math homework, talk to someone on the phone, and think about whatever else all at the same time. Trust me, it's way easier than it sounds. While I was batting away at Orka, I was controlling the Black Widow metal construct, willing it to kick Tiger Shark's ass Wing Chun/Crane Kung-Fu style. Tyrak was getting the Karate, mixed with hammer fighting techniques, real and/or made up, treatment. I may or may not have a plastic Thor hammer replica at home that I practice moves with. Don't…...don't judge me!

So yeah, I took it to Orka pretty hard. It was really just a matter of locking onto his weaknesses, and exploiting the hell out of them. I smacked him around a lot with my axe, attacking his head, chest, and kneecaps. Over a course of two minutes, after so many punches, kicks, G-Force bolts, and axe swings, I forced him down with a slash across the chest, that followed into a sweeping kick to one of his kneecaps. I flew straight up, getting him under the chin with my axe, smashing it down on his face, and creating a charging elephant construct to smash him into one of the barrier edges. I wrapped a missile construct around myself and flew into Orka. After an awesome Michael Bay explosion, I resumed my onslaught with a passion. For like another five minutes, I gave Orka the works. Punches, kicks, and all with rare moments of him actually breaking my momentum streak. Like before, it was the same matter of whacking and punching away at him, but I put more and more of myself into it with every passing second. Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to block one of my kicks, and make a wild swing for me. I ducked under it, and blocked a downward punch from him that would've put me three miles under the silt. I know this, because stopping his punch was like bringing a downhill freight train to a grinding halt; I was literally knee deep into the ground. Orka brought another punch down, but I bobbed under it, grabbed his wrist with both my arms, and swung him around. I let him go at like 100 mph upwards, shot him back towards me by directing a bolt of G-Force to strike him in the back. I intercepted him with a flying punch to the gut, grabbed him by his suit, and swung him into the barrier again. I hurled my axe, which was absolutely drowning in G-Force, at Orka as hard as I could, and made another explosion that would make Michael Bay bust a nut! Seriously, remember how I made a dome about the size of a mansion? The amount of boomage I just released was enough to level half of Central Park; I had to divert the energy into the barrier just to keep it from blowing apart on the inside out. The explosion ripped through every square inch of the inside of the dome, and while me and my constructs were safe, Tyrak, Orka, and Tiger Shark were like socks in a dryer; if that dryer was in a fire tornado, inside a lightning hurricane. Hell, when the explosion faded out, there was a chasm inside of the dome where ground should've been. The hole was so deep, even I couldn't see anything past the blackness and swirling silt. I'm no saying I meant to do that, but i'm not saying it wasn't badass either. Anyway, I flew at Orka while simultaneously summoning my axe back to my hand. I ignited it again, did a spin to wind up some momentum, and after a quick half second to change my axe into spear mode, whacked it across Orka's head with the force of Donkey Kong in Mario Super Sluggers.. I thought nothing of it at first, just another good swing I managed to get in, but then I noticed his aura flicker! It was only for a moment, and if I wasn't so wild on the swing, I could've diverted it into a finishing slash! Still, it was enough for me to know that Orka was so done!

While I didn't manage to bring the axe down before his aura kicked up again, I still got Orka in the chest with a nasty reverse kick, and began to beat the absolute $#!+ out of him with my axe and sword. For another 30 seconds, everything was as it should've been. I was kicking ass, the bad guys were losing big time, I was on top of my A-Game; then Orka just had to ruin the fun. I was slashing at hacking at him with my G-Force charged weapons, throwing in some kicks here and there for good measure, until out of nowhere, Orka blocked one of my sword swings, before punching me away with a stiff jab. It didn't hurt enough for me to cry about it, but i'm not saying it was just a "walk it off" type of hurt. Hell, I was still reeling over the fact that Orka, the underwater King Kong, actually managed to catch me with a punch; even without a great deal of speed, he shouldn't have been able to do that! As an even bigger testament to how much life just wanted to shove its middle finger in my face, I felt Orka, who was the equivalent of an entire trainyard slamming into my body, barrel into me with another punch. I went sailing into the chasm, my body stunned with pain, my mind numb with anger. Reasonably, I shouldn't have been as royally pissed off as I was, I had been hit way harder than that, but my emotional stability was still in flux, and right now all I knew was anger! It's a good thing there wasn't any gamma radiation nearby. I did a quick tuck and roll to get my balance back, reignited my G-Blazer, and shot straight up, decking Orka under the chin as hard as I could! I went into Blitz Mode, determined to break records for how many times I could punch a living being in the face in under three seconds. Whatever that record was, i'm certain I wasn't even close to breaking it. Don't get me wrong, I got more than my fair share of licks in on him, but Orka had stepped his game up in a big way. While I was still able to use my size and maneuverability to get some quick and hard hits to his mid section, face, and lower limbs, Orka's newfound speed meant that he was a lot better at blocking and retaliating against my attacks. For example, after getting a wicked X50 punch and kick combo off, Orka managed to block the next hit, swing at me with a wide left. I easily ducked under it, but didn't count on him coming for a quick right jab. Luckily, my body called for a Timeout, and I avoided the punch. Yeah, that was the other annoying thing about this fight, Blitz Extreme and Geo Blitz Extreme were out of the question. The extra speed would mean taking concentration off of maintaining my already spread thin use of G-Force. Instead, as Orka and I went at it for a few more minutes, I had to fall back on my martial arts skills to serve him some whup ass. While I definitely got more hits in, Orka, when he connected, hit harder. He was really bad up close, his reach was too wide, so I used that to my advantage a lot. Still, Orka was putting in some mad legit work, actually learning to maneuver some, making my life a lot more difficult. On the bright side, the more I punched him, the more my anger died down. After a good several hundred hits to his jaw I felt pretty mello.

"_Gaea!" _I thought to her. "_This isn't working!"_

"_Yes it is, boy," _she calmly thought back to me. "_You had this simpleton on the ropes forever."_

"_Until he came back with a vengeance and a need for speed! What the f*(# was that about?!"_

"_His adrenaline boosts his power, just like you. His fear of your attacks, of the possibility that each one could be the one that finishes him, heightened the effect the stone's energy has on him. Also, your glowing friend has yet to dispose of the witch that is giving splitting the stone's power to your enemies."_

"_Sunbird! How's she doing?"_

"_She could be doing worse, but I wouldn't count on her completing her end of the mission anytime soon."_

"_So much for the easy way out."_

"_Why don't you just let me possess you again? We could end this struggle almost instantly. Well...after we find time to merge."_

"_Yeah, i'm thinking no?"_

"_What?! Why not?!""_

"_Mamma, you gave me emotional turmoil. I'm still a wreck on the inside."_

"_Sorry about that, I really am, but i'm trying to help you. I'm not just a big ball of hate, GT."_

"_I know, i'm just not ready for that again, not now. It's definitely you, but it's also me too. Still, that gives me an idea, thanks!"_

I cut her off before she could say anything pouty. On the plus side, GT was an awesome way to shorten my hero name!

"_Yo, Storm-Lord!" _I thought to Jason as I continued to battle Orka.

"_What?!" _he responded.

"_That blaster thingy, can you hold and power up a charge?"_

"_Um…..yeah, yeah, totally! Why?"_

"_The dome of green fire and lightning, can you see it?"_

"_You mean that totally easy to see, brighter than a neon sign, swirling green ball of terror? No. Can't see it."_

"_Hardy har. Look, i'm gonna try something cool, and I need your help. Just charge up a blast until the count of thirty, then let it rip right at the green swirly stuff!"_

"_You sure about this? I don't wanna fry you."_

"_Absolutely positive, bro! Trust me!'_

"_Alright, whatever you're gonna do, do it in 3...2….now!"_

I uppercutted Orka away from me, dispersed my All-Metal constructs, and went into ass kicking overdrive!

I willed the G-Force inside the dome to go haywire, striking Tiger Shark, Tyrak, and Orka with bolts at least 20 times a second from every angle. While doing that, I willed the dome to lift off of the ground and gave it a bottom half, essentially making a mini-sun of my own. Anyway, I kept the sphere rising, until it reached about 100 feet up, and held it there. That took all of ten seconds to accomplish, and there was still more fun to be had before the fireworks got started. I summoned my axe, and went to work. Instead of flying around and smacking fools with it though, I threw it at tiger Shark first, and then thrust my arm to where Tyrak was getting pelted by three G-Force bolts. Dunno if a flying axe to the face was insult to injury, but…..eh, who cares anyway? I sensed Orka trying to get at me from behind, the guy was shaking off my G-Force bolts like they were just pillow hits. Really hard pillow hits, but still pillow hits all the same. I flexed my left arm, pointing my thumb back at Orka, and my axe flew into his gut. I called it back to me, flew at Orka, and gave him the granddaddy of all uppercuts with my axe. The guy hit the top of the dome before getting shot to the bottom with a huge G-Force bolt! As the time ticked down, I upped the ante on the intensity of the G-Force bolt strikes, blasting the $#!+ out of Orka and friends, while also corralling them into the center of the orb via giant hand constructs. I reshaped the constructs into a ball construct, cramming the three water friends inside, and transferred all of the energy of the bigger G-Force dome around my axe. I made sure to keep the ball construct big enough for Storm-Lord to see, otherwise he probably wouldn't know where to shoot. Afterwards, I bolted straight backwards as fast as I could. The next second, a huge THOOM, followed by an echoing SSSKKKRRAAATTT sound, charged through the water as Storm-Lord released his X100 Big Bang Kamehameha. I timed the trajectory of the blast just right, and threw my axe at the ball construct. I was half a mile away, so I was safe from the blast radius. An explosion of G-Force and lightning, big enough to trash an airport, sandwiched my trio of enemies. Even as far back as I was, the ripple effect of the blast still hit me like a hurricane. I managed to push through the shockwave, and while calling my axe back to my hand, flew to the impact zone. Using my super vision, I could see Tiger Shark, Tyrak, and Orka, floating about in a half conscious state, even better, Orka's aura was down! I immediately went into Blitz Extreme, created a giant G-Force sword, and sliced him in half.

Yeaaaaah…...maybe that was a teeny bit too brutal. Still, it had to be done. I'll admit, slicing people in half wouldn't have been my first choice; usually isn't my first choice. Sometimes you have to make exceptions though. Hell, you think my axe was for opening letters? Besides, Sunbird didn't cut off the power flow yet, not her fault i'm sure, and that put a limit on how many choices I had. Either I let him live so he could fight some more, or put him down and make sure he's not a threat again. Believe me, I know how cruel and heartless that sounds, but war will do that to you, and this was a war. Not trying to make excuses, but i'd find a way to live with the blood on my hands. Wish I could somehow make Orka's buddies feel the same way. The poor guys came too, just to find their pal in two pieces; Tyrak didn't exactly take it all that well.

"ORKAAAAAAAAA!" he bellowed. "NOOOOOOOOOO!"

He was still a good mile away, I was flying so fast to where the water was a roar in my ears….I could still hear the absolute agony in his voice. That's the thing about wars, no matter how worthy you think your cause is, you always end up hurting people in ways that a punch can never compare to. Even if these guys were total $#!+ wads, they were obviously friends. I just severed that forever. Hell, Tyrak was so distraught, he basically had a death wish. He roared an unmistakable "i'm gonna f*(# you the f*(# up!" battle cry, and charged me head on. He took off pretty fast, supersonic, which meant that his surge of anger was giving him a big power boost. I activated my G-Blazer, summoned my axe, and prepared for a pretty epic clash. Once Tyrak was in swinging distance, I swung my axe at his head, but he adjusted his momentum, and ended up doing a twisting flip over me. Had to admit, that was pretty awesome. I twisted around while stopping my own momentum, and came around with another swing to his chest. Tyrak caught the blade with his hands, aura or not that must've hurt, and then he started to grow. No ladies and gentleman, I am not $#!++!*% you. Tyrak had size manipulation powers! What. The. F*(#!

Before I could move out of the way, his hand already had a vice grip around my body; compared to how tall he was now, about 60ft, I was the size of a rice grain. He slammed me down into the ground, which which may have well have been a fall from orbit for me, and proceeded to beat the absolute hell out of me. Giant fist after giant fist pounded into me from above, each of them like battleships crashing against my body. Getting slammed into the ground already stunned the f*(# out of me, the endless barrage of car sized knuckles slamming into me at bullet speed was a whole new level of agony. Don't even bother about asking me "why didn't you use your growing powers, GT?", because I couldn't. The thing about my size growing/shrinking, is that even under the best conditions it's still dangerous as hell. With Tyrak's fists pounding into me every half second, if I tried growing, my concentration would've been broken during mid transformation. That could've resulted in a number of painful combinations, like bones being too big for a too small body, asymmetric limbs, etc. Hell, I was so out of it, I couldn't even pull myself together enough to try and blast my way out of this. I wasn't coughing up blood, so this wasn't as bad as Demon King, but I was still royally screwed.

"SURFACE WORLD SCUUUUM!" Tyrak bellowed as he kept up the fists. "YOU DARE SHED THE BLOOD OF THE SONS OF ATLANTIS?! FOR THAT, I WILL-"

THOOOOM! SSSKKKRRAAATTT! BOOOOOOOM! Oh my God. Thank you, Storm-Lord! For those of you that didn't put it together, my boy, the son of the thunder god, just saved my ass big time! Another lightning X100 Big Bang Kamehameha just nailed Tyrak in the head, forcing him backwards, and more importantly, off of me! This is the part where I tell my friend thank you, where I tell him how much I owe him for saving me from certain death. Believe me, once the rage quit subsided, I did.

Now let's see. How do I best describe what ensued in the following…...60-120 seconds? To put it frank, i'm pretty sure even the big green rage machine himself would've told me to take a chill pill. In the brief time, about two seconds, that Tyrak's pounding was put on hold, my fluctuating emotional state started to do that at like a million miles per second. First was the fear. Like, chilling, heart bursting, you're facing down the pits of death, fear. I've never been more frozen in my own terror since ever. I was hyperventilating, crying, gulping hard just to breathe. Getting beat down by Tyrak sent me back to the day before, when Goblin beat me to a pulp and stabbed me through the chest. I didn't let on then, i'm good at burying my emotions, but I was scared $#!+less. Not just for my teammates, but because I just didn't want to die. Just because i'm a superhero…..that doesn't mean I want to die like a fish. Sure, I understand the risks of the job, but if you're gonna tell me that YOU'D be chill with dying before you reach 20, you must be high, or really hate your life. Immediately, like going 150 mph before taking a hard left, fear gave way to the rage. I absolutely hated that feeling of helplessness, loathed it, despised it! My thoughts became a slurred roar of anger and confusion. I didn't care if Tyrak was sad about his $#!+ f*(# friend! He was in my way, he deserved what he got! Cruel I know, but understand I was in a really bad place, my reasoning skills were hacked to the bone at best. White hot rage stirred inside me, or maybe that was G-Force, burning like the core of a planet. All I wanted to do was hurt Tyrak, to break his face and beat him until he was just paste swirling in the sea! Despite my tunnel vision anger, I still had enough concentration left to grow to 60ft, tackle Tyrak to the ground, and….I kinda sorta blacked out a little…...or a lot.

I vaguely remember Gaea and Storm-Lord's voices in my head, but the swirling rage shunted them to the side like gnats. I think Tyrak managed to hit me once across the face, but if it hurt, my adrenaline didn't let me feel it. Between black spots in my memory, I recalled being in my G-Blazer as I pounded Tyrak into the dirt with 100 punches per second. I remember snatches of tree bark and vines...underwater?! Flashes of gold etched themselves into my memory, so the All-Metal was used at some point. I know for a fact I used G-Force like a sonuvabitch; pretty sure I breathed it out of my mouth at some point. The most concrete thing I remember though, was the feeling of crushing Tyrak under my fists, the sickening pleasure of feeling his bones crunch under the force of my blows. Some part of me wanted to stop, deep down something inside me was yelling for me to get a hold of myself, to realize when enough was enough-

"_GRANT, F*(#!^&amp; STOOOOOP!" _Gaea's voice slammed into my head like a tsunami.

No, seriously, it was like someone dropped an anvil in my head, and shook my like a maracha. I was gonna need a $#!+ ton of Advil for this, but it pulled me out of my rage mode. I almost wished I stayed angry, at least then I wouldn't have to look at my handiwork. Tyrak, the top half of him, was nothing more than a bloody slab of meat, cloth, and gold chainmail. His head was jelly paste, like someone dropped a watermelon from a tower onto a sidewalk. I didn't know if it was possible to grow plants under the ocean; based on the actual tree limbs, bridge cable thick vines, and thorns that could puncture a pickup truck, snaking in and out of what I assumed was Tyrak's chest, it was definitely possible. Whether everything else was done by hand…..I had wolverine claws around my hands made of All-Metal…...let's just leave it at that. Looking what I did was almost enough to make me vomit. Not because I had killed someone, way too late for that moral dilemma, but because of how intimate I had made this. Killing in the heat of battle was quick and faceless, this was a vindictive gorefest of my doing. I-I didn't mean to do this.

"_Gaea?" _I asked her, my voice on the edge of breaking. "_Did-did I-"_

"_There's no time!" _she interrupted me. "_Look at the wall!"_

I shrunk back down to normal size, and looked at the the huge jagged crevice in the wall where about ten turrets used to be. Residual blue energy was sparking around it, and that wasn't Storm-Lord's lightning. Even worse, of the turrets that were still firing, none of them were shooting lightning. God, no! I went into Blitz Extreme, my chest feeling like there was an iceberg in it, and frantically thought to Gaea.

"_What happened?!_" I almost screamed to her.

"_Attuma took control of the battle, with Namor!" _she thought back to me. "_While you were brutalizing that poor thing over there, Attuma blasted Namor through the wall; your friend was caught in the blast zone!"_

"_Is he-"_

"_No, but he's severely outmatched, he needs your help now!"_

As if on cue, Storm-Lord's voice rang in my head.

"_GEO-TITAN!" _he desperately thought to me. "_ATTUMA'S GOT THE STONE, I CAN'T BEAT HIM ALONE, HELP!"_

"_ON MY WAY, BRO!" _I thought back to him.

I took off towards his location as fast as I could. Before you call me out on abandoning my post, just don't. My friend needed my help. That takes priority. Besides, my rage quit deep in the enemy camp had put a huge crater in their forces. Combine that with what I did with my G-Force deterrent, and the heavy duty turret fire from the wall, and this battle was almost totally in our favor. Hell, even then we were still in the clear, because from the looks of it, Sunbird finally came through. Every sea creature, from the piranhaoids to the Leviathans, were experiencing some kind of headache that seemed to roll over the extent of the battle. Every creature that came out of the other side of the pain fought for us. This was extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY sucky for the barbarian looking Atlanteans, who seemed to be impervious to whatever was going on; they quickly became lost in a sea of ravenous animals who had a big appetite. Yup, things were going swimmingly on this side of the battle, now to pay Storm-Lord back for helping me out with Tyrak.

"_He has the power of the oceans of the entire world," _Gaea helpfully taught to me. "_Let me possess you! You'll-"_

"_No way!" _I thought back to her a little meaner than I intended. "_Sorry, G, but I can't go through that again."_

"_But you'll be stronger! If we don't work together you could die!"_

"_And let your goddess emotions wreck me again? No, no way. We'll do this together, but at arm's length. Nothing personal, it's just my emotions."_

"_That is personal, Geo-Titan. But fine, i'll help you as much as I can, even if you are intent on getting yourself killed every other hour."_

"_Thanks. Also, i'm sorry about that whole-"_

"_Nothing to be sorry about, my champion. You are still as noble and courageous as a young man your age can be. Now show Attuma what happens when dare to strike the allies of Gaea's chosen warrior!"_

Had to give it to her, she knew how to give one hell of a pep talk. I flew through the crevice in the wall, spotted Attuma pounding away at Storm-Lord's shield with his trident, like twenty miles away, and torpedoed straight at him. Nobody comes at my friends like that.

(Jason's Perspective)

Y'know, up until I got blasted off of the great wall of Atlantis, I was having a pretty good day. Using that turret was awesome, like being in a VR first person shooter (and I don't even like first person shooters, I suck at them)! I completely lost track of time while using that thing, and you better believe that was number one on my next Christmas wish list! Anyway, in the middle of this epic battle, after blasting down several thousand monsters, not to mention helping Grant do something reckless (cough* and save his life cough*), I really got the short end of the lucky stick. You know that old saying, "no good deed goes unpunished"? Yeah, I got some of that $#!+ first hand. While shooting at monsters and such, the battle between Attuma and Namor started to veer toward the wall, and it wasn't pretty for elf boy. Ok, technically the fight could go either way, Namor wasn't exactly goin' out like a chump, but it was clear Attuma had, and was starting to keep the upper hand. They were beating each other down on him left and right, using Poseidon energy, hard water constructs, and their tridents to brawl like gang rivals, which they kinda were in a way. Still, anything Namor dished out, Attuma dished out twice as hard. Plus there was no mistaking it anymore, Attuma had racked up enough juice to where he was glowing brighter than Namor, meaning he was stronger and good. As Namor gradually lost ground in the fight, I charged up my turret on more time, building up enough power to level two blocks worth of skyscrapers, and waited for the right moment. Granted, the right moment came at Namor's expense, but beggars can't be choosers. After a series of punches, slashes, and blasts, Attuma sidestepped one of Namor's trident jabs, grabbed it, and kicked Namor 20 feet away, before hitting him over the head with a giant water fist. Attuma now had both tridents, meaning he had the Stone of Poseidon in his possession. Sorry, that wasn't dramatic enough, lemme try again.

OH MY F*(#!*% GOD, ATTUMA HAS THE STONE OF POSEIDON! WHAT THE F*(#! HOW?! WHY?! HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?! SERIOUSLY?! REALLY, THO?! THIS IS A THING THAT'S HAPPENING?! F*(# EVERYTHING!

Better? I certainly think so. Let's move on.

For better or worse, I had my shot, and I took it for all it was worth. On the bright side, the pull back of the shot was legendary. Imagine that feeling of suddenly stopping after driving 150 mph in whatever you drive (if you drive), on top of the feeling of getting jolted out of your seat when you're in the back of the school bus and hit a pothole. If you crank that up by 10, you've got the feeling of what it was like to shoot a billion volt Super Kamehameha from one of these turrets. Whether because Attuma wasn't paying attention, or because he was too slow, probably both, he was swallowed by the blast, and by all accounts of logical reasoning should've been atomized. Then again, i'm battling for the fate of the world in an underwater kingdom for an item connected to a mythological god. At this point, logical was no longer a luxury that applied to me. Not even after the blast dissipated, a giant blue energy shield formed in the middle of it, blocking it entirely. I'm not one to brag (most of the time), but I was putting out some serious next level voltage power; Storm and Thor should learn from ME! The fact that my blast was put on hush mode that fast, that effortlessly, was just the beginning of screwed I was. The shield started to lose its form, but simultaneously grew brighter. I didn't even have time to yell for anyone to bail, before the counter blast went off. I activated my Thunder Form for protection, and shot straight up out of my turret, but, and I HATE saying this, I wasn't fast enough to get completely out of the way. No really, as fast as I was at running, my flying left a lot to be desired. Still, I managed to bust out my shield, get behind it, and create a protective barrier around myself before the blast made impact. Let's just say I after today, I really started to empathize with pinballs. The impact of the blast shot me like ten miles back, and was like half a step away from breaking my barrier. I managed to recharge it, just enough to survive becoming a living bowling ball, as I smashed through at least twenty different buildings before coming to a less than graceful stop at the entrance of some kind of temple dedicated to some guy holding a trident (yeah, that was probably Poseidon, but guys holding tridents were so common here, you couldn't be sure). I let my barrier fall, and turned onto my stomach, trying to remember what it was like to see straight. I heard a really loud boom in the distance, but didn't think anything of it until my Speed Sense went off. I barely had time to think "_wait, $#!+!", _before raising my shield on a reflex. The good news was that my Speed Sense was gonna be just fine. Because that operated on my bio-electric aura, which I learned to extend using electrons in an atmosphere around me, aka my Thunder Sense,I was still straight. By the way, if you think that doesn't add up, a drop of water has ten electrons in it, and I was in a f*(#!^% ocean! Anyway, the projectile, aka Namor, hit the ground just in front of me. Still, this guy got floored with so much energy, you might as well have just dropped a sack of grenades at my feet. The force knocked me backwards into the temple, where i'm petty sure I crashed into (smashed) a priceless Atlantean artifact that had some kind of religious, historical, or cultural significance. I tumbled to the floor, groaning and cussing at everything. A few second later, I felt the ground shake, but I was way too dazed to do anything about it. I heard a loud bellow, like a grizzly bear that learned how to speak, and started cussing more fervently in my head. Seriously guys, why in all f*(#!^$ hell do the big bads always end up finding me?! I'm not even the strongest member of the team! I managed to roll over enough to see Attuma standing over Namor's unconscious body, a golden boot planted firmly on elf boy's chest. He removed the stone out of Namor's trident, and put it in his own. You'd probably wonder why he'd go through the trouble of switching the stone from trident to trident, instead of just taking Namor's, but I got his drift. On one hand, Namor's trident was smaller and slimmer. It had a weird spiral hand grip, and while his trident prongs were sharp, good for both slashing and stabbing, the entire piece was just way too small for someone like Attuma, who was a little taller, and way more bulky. Hell, his trident was about twice as thick as Namor's, had a giant golden shark tooth for the center prong, and unlike the butt of Namor's trident (decorated nicely with a seashell), he had a foot long blade jutting out of the bottom.

"FINALLY!" he roared, as he became accustomed to the power surge. "THE STONE OF THE SEA GOD IS MINE, ATLANTIS IS MINE!

The water reverberated violently as his voice boomed across it, and I had a deep feeling in my gut that this dude was gonna be worse that Venom and Goblin put together. He threw Namor's trident behind him, and pointed his own at the king's chest.

"YOU WERE NEVER WORTHY OF THIS KINGDOM, OF THIS POWER! he continued to smack talk. "DIE, HALF-BREED!"

As he brought his trident own for the kilI, I tapped into Speed Mode, accessed the Power Grid, and created a shield construct about five feet away from Namor's body. I suspected that Attuma would be like Grant level strong (meaning I was so totally dead), so I put everything I had into making that construct as durable as possible. Even then, the trident stabbed through my shield like it was made of tissue paper! Seriously, what the hell?! With as much concentration as I was putting into that shield, it would be able to stand up against a barrage of missiles (i'm pretty sure), how in the name of my X50 grandfather could this guy smash through it so easy? You know what? It doesn't matter, I had an elf to save. I activated my Thunder Form, and flew right over Namor, blocking Attuma's trident with my Sky Shield. The impact should've crushed me, but the way my shield was set up, literally all of the momentum and power of the stab was absorbed into it (thank God for Vibranium). Oh, there was a huge BRAAAAAM sound, like someone hitting a gong, not to mention a shock wave around me that blew the temple apart (I put up a barrier around me and Namor, we were fine). I made my right arm vibrate super fast (Vibration Punch time, baby!), deflected Attuma's trident away with my shield, and came up with a right cross to the side of his face. The impact of the blow created a shock wave so strong, it could be heard from five miles away. A crater about five feet deep in the ground was a testament to how strong the punch was. Attuma. Didn't. Move. Oh, I managed to turn his face a little, but considering the fact that a punch like that could demolish a charter bus, it was clear that Attuma straight up ate that punch with no problem at all. He growled, and shot at me with eye beams (everyone loves the eye beams). I ducked under my shield, and reflected the blast back at him, launching him a good ten feet away. I pumped my shield with some voltage, and pursued. If anyone needed as little momentum as possible, it was this guy.

Attuma already got his balance back by the time I had caught up, and took a slash at me with his trident. I side flipped over it, and threw my shield at his head while I was still upside down (take that Captain America!). Even though a throw like that could slice a titanium vault in half, I just ended up annoying Attuma, who did little more than flinch when the shield hit his head. I landed just in time to duck under another one of his trident slashes, and summoned my Thunder Shields (the lightning enhancers, haven't used them in a while, btw, official). Didn't think i'd need these anymore, but since when have things every turned out the way I think they will? Half a second after I summoned my shields, my entire body was lost in the HUGE voltage jump. Yeah, I didn't think about it (face palm for myself), but I was in my Thunder Form; my shields were drinking and amplifying that $!+ up! If Attuma wasn't already two feet in front of me, I wouldn't even be able to see him under this curtain of lightning. Before he could make a move, I unleashed my X10 Super Ultra Final Flash, sending Attuma rocketing through at least three temples, and one of those transportation tubes. Yeah, these were gonna be used a lot. On a downside though, i'm pretty sure there were at least a good amount of civilians in the area. From what I was picking up with my Thunder Sense, most of them were soldiers, but their were lots of regular Atlanteans, scared families who were doing their best to hide from the war, to worry about. Again, Attuma ended up in a pretty unpolulated area, but I still had to be super careful not to bring the fight too close to the people.

I put my Thunder Shields away, and flew after Attuma as fast as I could, following a pretty easy trail of destruction to find him. A super annoying thing about him, was the fact that he always seemed to land on his feet (like an annoying cat). He pointed his trident at me, and shot out a ray of Poseidon energy. I dodged it easy, and pelted the sucker with a Phantom Bolt to his side. Again, it was one of those things where Attuma was barely moved, shrugging the bolt of like a punch from a ten year old. I upped the ante, and slammed a giant Thunder Fist into him, which definitely got the ball rolling a bit. While he was off-balance, I knocked him back to the ground with a Final Flash, and started to rain constructs after constructs on top of him. It start with a falling anchor, then a yacht, a whole bunch of hammerhead sharks, and anything sea related I could come up with. I kept that barrage up for maybe 15 seconds, enjoying the feeling of winning while I could. That was put on hush mode when a huge explosive wave blew up out of nowhere (interrupting my giant seal construct), knocking away like a fly. Only my Thunde Form kept me from getting vaporized. Hell, I got away knocked so hard, I flew back at least a good mile and a half, and didn't stop until I hit something solid. It wasn't a building or anything, that would be too easy, although i'd end up wishing it was. Instead, I found myself trapped in a giant hard water hand construct that was trying to squeeze me into jelly! My armor was taking all of the force, but I quickly reactivated my Thunder Form (the blast wave knocked me out of it), and put all of my concentration into creating a body shield around myself. Then came the onslaught.

Yeah, apparently Attuma didn't like being bombarded with lightning constructs (don't know why he wouldn't, they were sea themed), and decided to pay me back in spades. The first that I could remember seeing was a giant spear construct flying into me. My Speed Sense went off as it almost always does, but even then, there was little I could do stop the impact. I tried blocking it with a shield construct, but again, constructs, defensive or offensive, did absolutely jack $#!+ against Attuma. The trident shattered it like glass, and I had only enough time to put all that wasted effort back into hardening my body shield as much as I could before the spear hit me in the chest. I got bullet resistance pretty early on in this superhero gig, and i've never been shot before, but i'm pretty sure this is what it felt like to you normal people out there. Even with the body shield, it felt like a body took a sledgehammer to my chest at full force. I inhaled fast, upsetting the pain even more, and made a noise that I usually reserve for taking extreme $#!+$ (cafeteria pizza will do that to ya). That was only the beginning though, and not even the worst of it. I kept my eyes closed for all of it (you try keeping your eyes open when someone's trying to cut you open), but my Thunder Sense kept me up to date. I counted five tridents, ten swords, five swordfish, at least twenty shark teeth, and twice as many arrows. Not in that order exactly, but whatever. On top of that, Atuma was barraging me with blasts of Poseidon energy, like he had a f*(#1^% gatling gun…..which felt strange. Don't get me wrong, it still hurt like a mother, but in that oddly good kinda way, like when you swallow a lump of food that you didn't exactly chew enough (mom always tells me to chew like ten times before I swallow, but that takes too long), or finally using the bathroom after you've been holding it in forever. You can insert whatever weird good pain you want, but that's what the Poseidon energy blasts felt like to me. If getting burned alive could feel kinda good, this would be that. Anyway, Attuma kept up the barrage up for a little while longer, before I realized how stupid I was being.

Phase through it, dumbass! How could I forget that?! The way the water constructs were set up, their molecules were so compacted together (without being frozen), that they resembled solid objects! I went into SMS, and started vibrating as fast as I could. Ok, so it wasn't exactly like phasing through a solid wall, so much as it was like phasing through a thick layer of syrup. Still, I made it out ok; even got to turn Attuma's own gimmick against him. At the time, three sword constructs were making their way to my chest. I created a giant hand construct, willed it to grab the swords in one swoop, and supercharge them before throwing them back at Attuma. There was a huge boom, followed by a crackling/zap noises…...only for me to find out that attack was useless as hell. In a small crater, Attuma was sitting comfortably behind a barrier, although he looked absolutely pissed.

"INSOLENT BOY!" he roared at me, before converting his barrier into a power blast, big enough to swallow a bus.

I popped my Thunder Shields out, let them amplify the voltage of my Thunder Form, and shot another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash in response. The collision was just as DBZ-like as you'd expect it to be, our respective power blasts struggling for the win. My chances of winning were as about as even as Attuma's for maybe three seconds; then I got a small taste of just how outmatched I really was in this fight. For any of you that have ever pushed a car when it's in neutral, imagine how impossibly hard that would be if the car was going downhill at 100 mph. Not the best analogy, I know, but it's all I got. In half a second, the battle went from "I can probably do this", to "OMFG THERE'S NO WAY I CAN DO THIS!" I'm pretty sure this is what it's like to push against a tidal wave, cuz my blast was steamrolled so fast, it was actually laughable. My Speed Sense didn't even have time to go off; I tasted a mouthful of Poseidon Energy. My Thunder Form kept me from getting incinerated, but i'll be damned if it was easy to keep it up. Hell, to add insult to certain death, when my Speed Sense did go off, it was because Attuma had constructed a giant shark, made of water, to chew me to Jason bits. I quickly put up a barrier around myself, just in time to not get chomped in half. Rather than keep the shark construct gnawing at my bubble shield (I am not a chew toy!), Attuma broke it down, and propelled me down to him with a wicked fast water current. He hefted his trident like he was going for a Grand Slam, and if experience had taught me anything, this barrier wouldn't hold at all against a full on swing like that. I timed the impact just right, and as Attuma took a swing, I dropped my barrier, and summoned my Sky Shield, stopping the impact cold. Just like my Thunder Shields, the Sky Shield drank in the voltage, becoming more of a lightning frisbee. Attuma blasted at me again (shows how smart he was), and promptly got sat on his ass when his blast bounced back at him. I threw my shield at him and moved my arm back and forth once it hit him in the face; keeping the shield hitting him from different angles. Every time the shield made impact, I made the lightning around it discharge in violent bursts, keeping him slightly off-balance. Still, I was doing little more than annoying him, and once my shield started running low on energy, I summoned it back, and blasted at Attuma with my free hand. I'll always appreciate how strong my lightning is when i'm in my Thunder Form, cuz with one hand and now that I was really trying, I released on hell of a Final Flash (strong enough to put down ten tanks in a row)! Attuma got trucked 200 meters away, and after slamming into the dirt, I kept him under fire as best as I could. First, I recycled the blast energy into a giant sledgehammer construct, and kept it a pounding on top of Attuma's body. Next, I showered him with about thirty phantom bolts from every angle; the dude was on his way to becoming the next energizer bunny. I managed to keep that up for...let's be generous and say it was a full 10 seconds. After that, all underwater hell had its way with me.

It was subtle at first, just the water around me in a 300 ft radius swirling around me with absolutely no resemblance to a whirlwind at all, and you see where this is going, don't you? In less than a second, the waters were swirling around me at 300 mph, and I quickly put myself in another barrier. I was going for a ride.

In some way, I guess this was Karma coming back around. I mean, right before I killed Goblin, I put him in the whirlwind merry go round, so I guess it was fitting that the same happened to me (or my life kinda sucks, that could also be a viable option). As I got tossed around like a sock in a washing machine, bolts of Poseidon Energy started crackling through the whirlpool, you know, cuz everyone just has to steal the lightning gimmick now. The bolts slammed against my barrier with the force of….not enough? This isn't me being cocky or arrogant; for some reason, Attuma was dialing back his power. Did he not have complete control over the stone, was his grip over it weakening? A hard water killer whale construct slamming into my barrier with the force of a charging battle van said otherwise. That pattern kept up for at least a full minute. Poseidon Energy bolts kept slamming into my barrier like it was a lightning rod, on top of getting random predator sea creature construct trying to gnaw it open (so many different types of sharks, sea serpents, stingrays, eels, etc.). Still, even with my barrier getting slammed ten times a second, it still held up, even if it was just barely. What was this guy's deal? Not that I wanted to die, but this was getting straight up ridiculous.

"DO YOU SEE NOW, SURFACE DWELLER?!" Attuma's voice echoed through the water. "THIS POWER WAS NEVER MEANT FOR THAT CUR, NAMOR, AND IT SURE AS HADES ISN'T SOMETHING YOU CAN HOPE TO OVERCOME!"

I sensed him walk straight through the whirlwind, and hover in the center, looking at me hopelessly trapped in my lightning bubble. Now I knew why he was holding back, and I f*(#!^% hated him for it! Seriously, what is it with bad guys a their constant need to dick measure all the damn time? It wasn't enough for them to simply be the most powerful, or have world domination, or whatever, they always had to put on a show. Attuma was clearly no different, and decided to toy with me a little more to boost his self esteem (did he just not get enough love growing up?). He swung his trident, and a P.E. (Poseidon Energy) bolt struck and shattered my barrier. The water started to swirl faster, keeping my concentration away from creating another barrier around myself. Luckily, I was able to keep my Thunder Form, thus my body shield, intact. Good thing, because Attuma was intent on putting it to the test. P.E. bolts stuck me from all angles, hitting with the impact of cannon shots, but again, having that underlying tone of an intense burning, but somehow feel good sensation (like that burn you sometimes get when you drink a can of Sprite or something fizzy, I can't be the only one who notices that). On top of that, Attuma barraged me with several hard water constructs (fists, claws, spears, etc).

"IT WAS FORETOLD IN THE ATLANTEAN CHRONICLES THAT I WOULD RULE THIS NATION!" he roared in victory. "YET NEVER IN MY WILDEST DREAMS DID I EVER IMAGINE THAT I WOULD BE THE MASTER OF THE ENTIRE SEA ITSELF!"

Anger started to boil inside me. Forget doing the right thing, I just wanted Attuma senseless. I hated being at his mercy, I hated him celebrating a victory he didn't get yet, and above all, I hated getting smacked around! His constructs and energy bolts nailed me left and right for a few more seconds before Attuma decided that he was done playing with me. Water shackles held me still amidst the swirling water, and in the middle of the whirpool, a giant sword (this thing could skewer a gas truck like it was an ordurb), and charged it with Poseidon Energy.

"THE VERY CONCEPT OF A MANGY LIGHTNING WIELDING SURFACE DWELLER DENYING ME MY RIGHT TO RULE?!" he continued. "LAUGHABLE! A POINTLESS DEATH FOR A POINTLESS BATTLE!

He willed the sword to fly at me, and I started vibrating super fast. The way my shackles were set up, I wouldn't be able to avoid the sword, but thank God I could make it go through me in a non-stabby way. Normally, this would be nothing, just another projectile to phase through, but the P.E. added a different flavor to this construct. Besides the fact that I had to keep up the right speed of vibration for about 10 seconds straight (longer than I was used to), the P.E. burned through literally every molecule of my being! I screamed in….agony? Triumph? Pleasure? Still not really sure where I stood on this type of energy. It wasn't toxic for me, like the Ares and Hades energy, but it still a stretch to say I could trust it. As was such, this thing was all in my body now, I could feel it, and just had to hope it wouldn't have me coughing up blood when this was all over. Anyway, after the blade had "safely" gone through me, I took the fight to Attuma again (took me long enough). While I was still vibrating, I activated a surge of lightning around myself, and in a process similar to what I do when I go into my Storm-Form, I became a living lightning surge. I'll call it Thunder Form 2. In this form, i'm pretty sure I had the same powers I had in my Storm-Form, except for the fact that I was all lightning, and felt like I was one with a massage chair. I looked down at Attuma's stupid face, imagined myself becoming a Mega Lightning Strike on top of him, and OH MY GOD, WHAT A RUSH! In like a millisecond, I went from zero to Mach 2. My lightning form expanded to 10X its size, and I crashed into Attuma with the force of a….well, lightning bolt. Stone of Poseidon or not, taking a lightning bolt strong enough to level skyscrapers will put anyone on their asses; Attuma was no exception. I changed my form into a 10 ft gorilla, and started to punch the $#!+ out of him, actually giving off an authentic roar as I hulked out (I really resented that whole whirlpool thing if you couldn't tell). Despite my huge form, lightning isn't exactly known for being slow, and neither was I. SUV sized fists smashed Attuma into the silt 100 times a second, each impact equal to the force of a car bomb. I didn't give Attuma an inch; no time to create constructs or energy blasts when you're getting gorilla stomped. Still, I didn't account for Attuma's new speed and strength. After like 30 seconds of facing the wrath of Mighty Joe, Attuma somehow found the speed (God knows he already had the strength) to block one of my punches, and blast a P.E. bolt through my face.

Ok, this is where things get a little tricky. Based off of the fact that I got my punch blocked, I was clearly some form of a solid being in Thunder Form 2. Still, that wasn't the complete case. When I say that the blast went through my face, I mean it shot a point blank hole about the size of a tire through my gorilla form's face. Still, if I was supposed to feel anything, specifically pain, that was a total misfire. I guess, if I wanted to be generous, I could say that it felt like a blast of wind, but….no. Hell, the blast didn't even seem to have the effect it would've, if I were in my Storm-Form (energy blasts didn't damage the integrity of Thunder Form 2). Attuma might as well have shot at the open water for all the good it would do him. Regardless, it's the thought that counts, and I decided to give him a gift for effort.

I deconstructed my gorilla form, and formed into a tesla sphere around Attuma, violently blasting him with lightning from every direction as I lifted him higher and higher above ground. I zapped him about 30 times a second (so trippy to say that when you're the actual lightning), every bolt having 10,000 volts of juice behind them. Attuma tried desperately to get free, blasting at me from the inside out, but to no success. Nope, for the next 2 minutes, his vocabulary consisted of ZAP, CRACK, SKRAT, and POP (actually he was yelling something in Atlantean that i'm pretty sure would make an old lady faint)!

For a while, it seemed like all I had to do was play this out and bleed Attuma dry…...then Attuma found a way to kill the combo. It was so simple, I was actually dumbfounded he didn't try it sooner; all he had to do was bust out with a wave of water. Granted, it just got me off of him for a moment, and did no damage to my ability to maintain this form. Instead, Attuma just traded a bad situation for a worse one. I made myself grow and expand, transitioning from a small collection of lightning, to an almost uncontrollable surge, strong enough to wreck Times Square. I made sure to contain the voltage as I grew; again, collateral damage is a thing we wanted to avoid. This time, no amount of water Attuma was throwing out could stop the growing storm that was my…..uh, whatever, point is I turned into a huge ass lightning tornado (leave the hyperbolics to my teammates).

No matter how bad Attuma thought his little whirlpool was, I was far worse. While it probably took him effort to make constructs/blast energy, I had no such troubles. I started out slow, a few hundred lightning bolts striking him from all directions every second. Each bolt had the striking force of a missile, and while i'm not sure I was actually hurting him (that body shield wouldn't quit), at the very least I was keeping Attuma off-balance. After getting used to the feeling of being a tornado, I started to throw a few constructs at Attuma. Nothing fancy at first, just a couple of giant fists, swords, hammers, and a few missile constructs. Then I found out, "holy $#!+, i'm actually really good at this!", and went above and beyond with the constructs. I'm talking gatling guns, elephants, lions, Ben 10 aliens, Power Rangers, hell, out of respect I threw in Luke Cage, Nightcrawler, and Storm. These weren't one at a time either; every second there were at least twenty different constructs, each about the size of a two story house, hitting discount underwater Beast with enough force to probably make even Grant buckle (I said probably). That's not to say Attuma didn't have a fighting chance. While he was off-balance most of the time, there were moments when he'd get his footing back (if you can get your footing underwater), and would fight back with some constructs of his own. For example, after beating on him left and right with ten Fourarms constructs, the guy managed to create an energy charged barrier of water around himself, and made one hell of a shock wave, laying waste to all of them. I immediately tried putting the pressure back on him, creating two huge schools of Great White Sharks, and pouring on the lightning strikes, but again, Attuma proved he wasn't always as dumb as he usually was. In addition to his body shield, he created a full body cast of water around himself, essentially giving himself a second layer of protection. My lightning strikes were starting to hit with half the force they usually would, and that was problematic to say the least. Attuma started to wreck my shark constructs, blasting them away with P.E., and slicing them in half with huge cleaver constructs.I tried the same things with herds of rhinos, elephants, swordfish, I even tried shackling him down with lightning cuffs, but this guy was way stronger than anything I was able to dish out (not to mention probably extremely pissed off). Hell, when I finally did manage to get the momentum back, it took a total of 300 lightning strikes, 50 firing tank constructs, and five whole Power Ranger teams (Wild Force, Ninja Storm, S.P.D, Mystic Force, and Jungle Fury). All that, just to get the momentum back for a total of ten seconds, before Attuma gave me the finger for it.

Again, either Attuma was not as dumb as he looked, or was really good at adapting (probably a little of both), because what he pulled off next was nothing short of tactical. Not genius, but competence to say the least. A huge burst of water, a geyser the size of a skyscraper huge, shot up, and then expanded so fast and hard, it almost ripped apart my lightning tornado form. Attuma kept the pressure on, fighting tooth n' nail against my form, which was now nothing more than a glorified dam. Remember, there were still civilians in the area, and while I may not exactly identify as a superhero (bull$#!+, I know), civilian casualties was high on my list of no no's. If I let this barrier fall, the blast wave would wreck everything within a ten mile radius at minimum. I'm not saying Attuma magically knew I cared about loss of life, it's possible he just came up with a clever way of escape, but if he was using this to his advantage, to keep me on defense, i'd have to give him a slow clap for clever innovation. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, I was kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place now. Whether it was the time limit for how long I could keep my atoms this widespread, or the strain of trying to keep Attuma's shock wave from getting out, I was starting to feel that familiar pain of molecules being ripped away. I had no desire to almost die again (you can tell by the safe environments I always play in), and while I still refused to just let my form down and destroy people and property, I found a way to have the best of both. See, while Attuma's plan of trying to push me apart from the inside out was pretty good, in doing so, he left himself open. The water was pushing violently against my tornado form, but there was a space right above him that had no type of water resistance pushing out at all; a space big enough for a Zeus Cannon to come down and…. say I dunno….f*(# $#!+ up?

It wasn't exactly the textbook definition of easy, I had to (in the span of two seconds) calculate the integrity of my form, siphon off as much as energy as I could without endangering it of the vortex giving way to soon, and still find a way to give the cannon the umph it needed to put Attuma down for the count. This is where the Power Grid came in real handy. While I couldn't overcharge what little use of voltage I could spare, I could use the Power Grid to enhance said voltage, and you'd better believe I milked that for all it was worth. In half a second, I had absorbed enough energy to power Times Square five times over. I willed all of that energy to materialize a mile up above myself and Attuma (my God, how was I fine with actually being a lightning tornado?), and made like thirty percent of my being (along with 805 megawatts of power), come down in the most epic Zeus cannon ever! That is not an exaggeration even in the slightest. I hit Attuma so hard, so fast, we hit the ground in a fraction of a second, and kept tunneling through miles of solid rock. I hope I didn't end up damaging the integrity of the platform (it had a good quarter mile of buildings on it), but in retrospect, the Atlanteans really needed to reevaluate their architectural choices. As we tunneled clean through the rocky platform, I willed my body back together, and socked Attuma across the face with a lightning charged Vibration Punch. Maybe it was the adrenaline talking, but I think I was getting a bit stronger somehow. Before, all a punch (especially my strongest) could do was turn Attuma's head, now I heard a distinct "omph" escape his lips. While he was distracted, I summoned my sword, changed it to spear mode, and covered it in a wreath of electricity. I took a swing at Attuma's chest, but the blue bastard was fast, and quickly brought his trident around for a block. My spear hit Attuma's trident right at the base of the head, making contact with the slot that had the stone in it. Based on the huge ripple that came of the clash, it was still very clear he had the strength advantage. Again, if not for the Vibranium (and I guess Adamantium), my face would've been cleaved right off. Besides creating a disturbing sound (like a high pitched whine mixed with the sound of grinding metal), hitting the trident with my spear created some sort of violent feedback. The stone surged in a huge blaze of P.E. dousing me like a fire hose for each second our spears were clashing against each other. Like always, contact with P.E. felt good in a bad way. In small bursts it was ok; prolonged exposure was like being in an acid bath. I activated my Thunder Form, which more or less dampened the feeling of the P.E., vibrated my left leg, and punted Attuma as far away as I could. Granted, that was only about five or six feet away, but it made me feel good about myself. I was starting to think that I had an actual chance in this fight, that I could do to Attuma what I did to Goblin. The next few moments of my life would be the biggest wake up call i've ever had; period.

Attuma clocked me hard in the everywhere with a P.E. charged water fist construct, big enough to smash a high school football field. It felt like a skyscraper had rammed into me. On top of getting knocked away at the speed of a bullet, my Thunder Form was hit so hard, it went out like a light. From what my senses were telling me, I was maybe half a second from slamming into the bottom of the rocky platform of one of Atlantis' city parts. At the speed I was going at, i'm pretty sure that would do me in, even with the armor. I didn't have the time (or skill), to alter my trajectory, so I started phasing like a mother f*(#$ ! As I phased through miles upon miles of solid rock, I prayed to whoever would listen that i'd have enough momentum to make it back to the surface. I was still recovering from my most recent use of molecule expansion, if I stopped in the middle of this thing, there was no way i'd have the strength to keep phasing long enough to find a way out. Luckily, Attuma's punch shot me upwards with momentum to spare, and I was able to drop the phasing thing….just in time to almost get killed again. Yeah, my Speed Sense went off like a hurricane, and I managed to twist (I was in an upside down, facing the wrong way position) around, take notice of the golden trident about to hit me like I was a baseball, and summoned my Sky Shield to save me. The impact of the blow sent my soaring away like a comet, and I count maybe four seconds before Attuma caught up for another strike, this time, sending me plummeting at twice the speed into another landmass. I managed to flip, hit the ground shield first, and roll away less than gracefully through some kind of underwater marketplace. I ended up getting separated from my shield, which was less than optimal, considering Attuma was still hot on my tail. I sensed him coming at me from a downwards angle, waited for the right moment, and blindsided him by dropping a safe construct right on top of his head, sending him slamming into the dirt just in front of me. I activated my Thunder Form again, backed up as far as I could in one leap (about 20ft), popped out my Thunder Shields, and let Attuma have another taste of a full on X10 Super Ultra Final Flash (never gets old). Before you call foul, just don't. Like I said, collateral was something I was always taking into account. While there definitely were a lot more people in this area than last time (thanks Attuma), i'll be damned if i'll use that as an excuse to justify carelessness. As the blast engulfed Attuma, I made sure to control it, and make it go up in an arc. It was a close call for sure (I almost atomized a couple of decorative coral shops), but through mad crazy willpower, I managed to not destroy any lives or livelihoods...i'm pretty sure. Now if I could just translate that effort to actual success, i'd be golden.

Seriously though, Attuma basically existed to tell me "no matter how hard you try, it won't be enough". Despite getting blasted with at least 200 megawatts of power, Attuma quite literally powered through it (he soared through the blast like a scissor through paper), and kicked me in the gut so fast, even my Speed Sense didn't go off. The wind (or water), was knocked right out of me as I careened into the ground about twenty feet away. I was of course knocked right out of Thunder Form (at this point why did I even bother?), and got to have the pleasant view of Attuma leaping at me Spartan style, his trident primed for a landing stab. Despite the fact that he was crazy fast now (the effects of the stone must've really been kicking in now), he ended up tasting another mouthful of lightning; God, I was really starting to love these Thunder Shields! While all that did was make Attuma angry, it gave me just enough time to get back to my feet. He hefted his trident and torpedoed at me, roaring some kind of Atlantean battle cry. At the speed he was coming in, I couldn't peg him with a construct or Phantom bolt, not to mention the fact that I didn't have the strength to use his momentum against him like I wanted to. Instead, I waited until he was in too close, and popped out the Sky Shield. Attuma hit me with the force of a missile, but gold old fashioned Vibranium made it nothing (#VibraniumFTW). Also, because he had basically smashed into a wall with a fancy stick, Attuma lurched forwards, his grip on the trident almost non-existent, and his face almost begging to be smashed in. I gripped my shield with my left arm, popped out a Thunder Shield on my right arm, and covered that arm in voltage. As I bought my fit up for an uppercut, I made sure to vibrate my arm, and release the blast at the exact same time my fist made contact with the side of Attuma's head, adding layers upon layers of extra muscle to the punch. Attuma shot up like a volcano in a doomsday movie, and while i'm sure he'd be up and at em' in a little bit, I tried my damndest to stop it from happening.

I grabbed Attuma' trident, and tried to take the stone out of it for a quick half second. Yeah...no good. For one, the stone was locked in way too tight; no empty space to get any leverage to pry it from. Also, i'm not gonna lie, I REALLY wanted to get this damn trident out of my hands! Even if it wasn't a full second, the sensation I got from holding it, the residual energy from the stone, was so painful/invigorating, I couldn't keep hold of it without wanting to yell out. If I held this for any longer, I was afraid i'd either burn up, or not want to let go (or both). I created a construct that was a mix of a crossbow and an Atlantean turret (God, I loved those those things), and placed the trident in the launching slot. After giving it a jump of voltage, I shot it at Attuma for all it was worth. The idea was simple...ish. I assumed Attuma's trident and armor were made of the same material. If the stone enhanced the metal, and now that it was out of his grasp, the trident would impale him with no problem.

And now to address the elephant in the room. Look, I don't wanna kill, and I don't like the idea of killing, but i've accepted the idea that it was a possibility since Delta Force's first mission. Hell (and take this with bags of salt), this is coming from someone who thinks people like The Punisher are actually on to something. Not in the sense that everyone who commits crimes should be put down all the time, but in the sense that some cases are extreme enough to justify more permanent methods of putting down threats. Think of it, how many widows, orphans, and broken families would be left in the aftermath of Attuma's onslaught? You think he gave a damn? You think he'd lose any sleep over it? If the answer to those questions is no, then how much did the world really need men like him? To quote a passage from the Bible (see, Mom? I read it…..sometimes), those that live by the sword, die by the sword. From what I gather, Attuma lived by a pretty damn big sword. Granted, with the trail of black eyes and bruises i've left over the years, I was hardly one to talk, but at least my shortcomings were from self defense. I didn't go looking for trouble, I just sort of pull trouble in naturally. I didn't start the fights (mostly), I finished them. Hell, you wanna discard all the ideological bull$#!+? Here's the bottom line, either I put him down, or he puts me down. No matter which way you spin this, no matter how much you think killing him makes me just as bad, the simple fact of that matter is there was no other way of ending this; at least not easily. Sorry to break it to you, but the only option I had for taking down Attuma, was to finish him. I was just barely strong enough to beat Goblin, Attuma proved to be much more of a challenge.

Anyway, the trident hit an unsuspecting Attuma right in the chest...and did absolutely nothing! Figures. I didn't count for the body shield holding up. I figured the trident was the majority of the source of his power, that without it, there was no body shield. That didn't exactly go through the way I thought it would, and all I did was succeed in pissing Attuma off even more, while simultaneously giving him back his shiny toy. He grabbed his trident, and the water around him started to swirl like crazy. I can only imagine this is how Goblin felt when I was literally a tornado over him. Endless gallons of water swirled half a mile up, P.E. flashing and surging through it. With enough water swirling violently above you to crush a small town, you can come to realize just how monumentally screwed you are. When that happens, you really start getting creative with ways to save your butt. I created a huge ball of electricity, and shot it out. Midway to Attuma, I made the ball burst and scatter, spreading the voltage out as thin as I could, about a mile in distance. I shaped the voltage into letters, and spelled out something for big blue.

I BET YOU TOO SCARED TO FIGHT UP CLOSE!

I knew his type. Attuma was just another loudmouth trying to compensate for sucking at life. Guys like him could be riled up so easily, it was almost laughable; the kind of guy who'd throw the first punch because he heard a 6th grade "yo mamma" joke; if I could use that to stay alive, good. Of course, because loudmouth bad guys are so predictable, the water around Attuma started to swirl a great deal slower; I had gotten his attention, now to reel him in. I rearranged the letters.

TRUE WARRIORS DON'T HIDE BEHIND THE WATER! IS THE GREAT CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS SCARED?!

The water wasn't even moving anymore, and using my enhanced vision, I could see that Attuma was shaking with rage. One more taunt oughta do it.

COME DOWN AND FIGHT! UNLESS YOU NOTHIN' BUT A…..

Attuma didn't even wait for me to finish that sentence. Good thing, Mom would kill me if she ever found out what I was planning to spell out. So yeah, good job me. I had successfully managed to make an unstoppable bull with the power of a god charge me, his head probably roaring "kill Jason!". Do I even need to spell out how much that plan backfired? Long story short, he came in fast, hard, and brutal! He didn't say anything as he slashed hacked, and blasted at me, but he sure as hell yelled a lot. I assumed that he would be in too much of a frenzy to fight straight, which didn't pan out at all. First off, I had to stay in my Thunder Form just to keep up, and it's not like I was really all that good with flying. Attuma battered away at me with his trident, forcing me on the almost permanent defense with my shield. Oh, I was able to get off some Final Flashes, even got in a good boxing glove construct to his face, but Attuma could take anything I threw at him, and gave back 5X as hard. Attuma battered away at my shield, never giving me a moment where I wasn't desperately trying to get some distance between us. For an angry war crazed loon, dude was a damn good with that trident. Every time he struck, he'd change momentum, and either try for a stab or slash elsewhere. For example, if I blocked high, he'd reverse his slash and come for a stab to my gut. When that didn't work, he grabbed my shield, and tried to pry it (and my arm) away from me. I got him hard in the chest with a Vibration Kick, slammed my shield across his face, and was jerked by the back of my neck into Speed Sense. Directly behind me, four hard jagged P.E. charged spearheads were about to get real friendly with my back. In response, I pulled out my Thunder Shields (again), backflipped over the Cadillac sized projectiles, and let loose another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash as they rammed into Attuma's chest, and head. Even if he had a barrier that could stand up to a platoon of tanks, i'm pretty sure Attuma felt that on some level, cuz he went soaring backwards at 150 mph. Before he could fire up the brain cells to recover, I tapped into the Power Grid, charged up the atoms everywhere, and hit Attuma in the back with a Zeus Cannon, sending him soaring back to me. I made another Zeus Cannon shot him from the bottom, then another from a downwards 140 degree angle, and another coming from the bottom again, and it kept going, and going, and going. I managed to keep this up for a total of 20 consecutive blasts, before I simply couldn't keep it up anymore. It's way different when you summon Zeus Cannons once in a while. When you pile them on top of each other, it feels like trying to lift a truck with your head, while a safe is lodged in your chest. My vision was swirling so bad, I had to shut off my senses, and refocus. I could still see my way around (Thunder Sense is everything), so believe me when I say Attuma was not catching me off guard anytime soon. He created a multitude of P.E. charged blade constructs around me, and despite being in mortal danger, I had to give it up for his placement choices. In every conceivable direction, hundreds upon hundreds of constructs were on their way to give me a really brutal acupuncture (I still don't get the appeal of that). There was no super easy way out of it, the constructs were piled on top of each other so thick, I couldn't dodge a thing. Plus, there was no way I could create a shield construct strong enough to block even a third of them, let alone the full set. Again, if Attuma managed to put this all together, I hard to at least give him some credit. Still, my phasing hadn't let me down let, now to really put it to the test. I kept my shield up, flew straight at Attuma, and started vibrating as fast as I could. The good thing was that with the shield blocking the straight away, I didn't have to take all of the P.E. charged swords. Oh I still took a good handful (107 precisely), but it only felt slightly above overdosing on 30 gallons of adrenaline and acid, so that made it ok. Once getting in range, I slammed Attuma in the face with a flying shield bash, threw it behind me, and before he could stop me, hit him point blank in the face with what had to be at least the 5th X10 Super Ultra Final Flash. As he careened into the ground, I called my shield back to me, and planted a Vibration Kick in Attuma's chest to help him in his journey back to the earth. I kept up the momentum by creating waves after waves of constructs (mostly Power Ranger, Ben 10, and WWE wrestler themed) to pummel Attuma as much as I could, while circling around him and a mix of ranged and melee attacks to keep him off balance. Granted, with this guy, my constructs were about as sturdy pool noodles, but they did the things they needed to do before Attuma smashed them. A Mystic Ranger would get a slash off before Attuma blasted it to bits, Fourarms would slam Attuma into the ground and wail on him for a few seconds before getting ripped and half, and Shawn Michaels got in a Sweet Chin Music to Attuma's jaw, before getting slashed apart. While the constructs were doing the heavy lifting for me, i'd get off some Vibration Punches and Kicks in where I could, and blocked all of Attuma's trident attacks with my shield, before conjuring up another wave of battle constructs to help cover my retreat.

"STOP HIDING, BOY!" Attuma yelled at me as I continued my Guerilla Warfare strategy. "FACE ME IN BATTLE LIKE A WARRIOR!"

"Not likely, Blue Man Group!" I yelled at him as I threw my shield at the back of his head. "I'm fine with this, thanks very much!"

Attuma whirled around and shot at me with a huge ray of Poseidon Energy. I ducked under it, and created a falling metro train construct to slam into him. I recycled the voltage, created a giant jackhammer construct, and did my best to drill him out of existence. I managed to keep it up for a good 10 seconds, mostly because I kept creating chain constructs to try and keep Attuma from breaking out, I even sacrificed my construct legion to focus more on keeping Attuma down for as long as possible. Still, not only did I fail, I failed so spectacularly bad, it made me wonder why I even try. Out of the five foot crater I drilled Attuma into, a huge ray of Poseidon Energy shot up, shattering my jackhammer construct. In the span of half a second, Attuma's fist was an inch of my face. My Speed Sense literally kicked in just in time for me to keep my head. Also, Attuma was covered in so much P.E. he was basically a neon stick; a violent, blood thirsty neon stick that made me both hyper and nauseous just my being near him.

I dodged the punch, but had to hightail it backwards to dodge a wide slash to my midsection. I called my shield back, making it slam into the back of Attuma's head, and side flipped over him to catch it. He came around with high stab, but only found a lightning charged Sky Shield to greet it. I couldn't get cocky though, cuz a blast of water floored me quick. Attuma pounded at me like a tiger, eager to keep up the slicing and dicing. I managed to get to my feet, my Thunder Form still intact, but again, all I could do was block, cover, and try not to scream. Yeah, Attuma was on a warpath, slashing and stabbing relentlessly at any opening he could get. In the span of two seconds, I had to block ten stabs to my legs, five slashes to my upper body, not to mention dodge/phase through so many shark constructs. I couldn't find the time to access the Power Grid, or blast Attuma with some lightning, cuz all of my concentration was solely on not getting skewered. Oh, and did I mention the part where I felt like I was being burned alive? Yeah, this fight was so over saturated with Poseidon Energy, it was all I could do just to keep myself from passing out from either pain or adrenaline. Hell, when it came to not getting skewered, I wasn't even all that good at that! Through all the slashing, blocking, and yelling, Attuma managed to divert my guard way to high, and way too far to the right, before whirling his spear around fast, slicing right through my chest. When, I say slice through my chest, I mean I phased through the slash. To say that I was safe, would be a total lie though. Up until this point, I was mostly getting the full P.E. treatment from the outside (where it should've stayed), when that trident went through me, with my body vibrating at supersonic speeds, the stone did too. While the actual trident didn't slice me, the feeling of the stone actually passing through and mixing with my internal everything, was quite possibly the most excruciating sensation of my life. My system went into shock, I literally lost the ability to stand for a few seconds as my body tried to process the massive energy shakeup. Thank God I could still hold a shield, or else i'd've been straight up gutted. Still, when I say I was messed up, I mean I was really messed the f*(# up. I could feel the Poseidon Energy mixing and clashing with my organs and powers. It was shuffling around so much, I could've sworn it was looking for something; trying so hard to make my body accept it. Either way, I was not getting up anytime soon, which allowed me to finally admit to something i've known since the first few minutes of this fight; I needed help. Through luck and skill (also serious improv), I was just able to beat Goblin….before almost dying myself. Attuma was not going down anytime soon, least of all to my hand. If I wanted to live, i'd have to call in the big guns.

"_GEO-TITAN!" _I thought to my only hope. "_ATTUMA'S GOT THE STONE, I CAN'T BEAT HIM ALONE, HELP!"_

Some part of me is ashamed for admitting defeat, but not enough to where i'd fault myself for making the decision to live.

"_ON MY WAY, BRO!" _he thought back to me.

I figured I had a good three or four seconds, before my knight in shining armor came to my rescue, but that was actually not the case. Before Attuma could hit my shield again, a sudden rush slammed into him, rocketing him a good half a mile away; also tossing me like a tumbleweed.

Even in my less than optimal state, I could still hear the huge THOOMS, as well as see the huge blasts of green and blue in the distance. This fight was gonna get rough, and like gentleman, we needed to take it outside.

"_Geo-Titan!" _I thought to him.

"_What?" _he asked me. "_You alright, bro? You good?"_

"_We'll see about that, but that's beside the point. Look, thanks for the save, I owe you big time, but we gotta get this fight out of the city, like right now."_

"_Dude, the city is an entire country! How do we get him out of a country?!_

"_We punch and blast a lot until we get him out! You start, i'll catch up in a bit!"_

"_Right, just punch the insanely powerful junior sea god out of the area; piece of cake!"_

"_I can hear sarcasm."_

"_I don't give a f*(#."_

He didn't say anything after that, but a few seconds later I heard a really loud THOOM, and saw a glowing blue ball rocketing off the ground, my friend, the flying green fire man, soaring after it. In all seriousness though, that guy (even if he's a total tool) was the best ever. With Grant providing a bit of a reprieve for me, I focused on making my body deal with whatever the P.E was doing in there. I made my body vibrate, and willed it to kinda sorta metabolize the Poseidon Energy inside of me. Granted, digesting a foreign substance probably isn't the best way to deal with said foreign substance, but I was on the clock, had to think on my feet. At first, nothing of interest really happened, just the run of the mill sensation from shaking all of your atoms faster than humanly possible (like you'd know what that feels like). Then, in a nanosec, the feels went from not feeling anything out of the ordinary, to feeling like I was trying to digest fire and ice and the same time. I groaned and rolled in pain, not even able to stop whatever it was that was happening to me. The feeling kept building and building, until it felt like I was being eaten from the inside out by some kind of cosmic tapeworm. Still, I endured the pain for a good 20 seconds, before it just suddenly stopped. No joke, the pain, and the power I assume, had stopped hurting just as quick as it had flared up. I got to my feet, took a quick sec to move my muscles around, make sure my powers were still working right (good to go on all cases), and activated my Thunder Form. Time to get back in the fight!

It wasn't hard at all to find and catch up to Grant. For one, my Thunder Sense was working a lot better for some reason. Before hand, I could only sense things within a mile radius of myself. Now, I was effortlessly mapping out at least five miles in every direction, not to mention able to sense individual bioelectric signatures within the area. Also, was I flying faster? I mean, it wasn't by much, but I noticed how flying was suddenly a lot easier, like the water pressure had somehow lessened around me. Ok, maybe that stone did give me a bit of a jump of some sort. Here's hoping I wouldn't end up paying for it.

I caught up to Grant just in time to see him dodge a front kick from Attuma, and slam him in the chest with a hard elbow. He followed it up with an uppercut to his jaw, and spun into a hard reverse kick, sending Attuma sprawling backwards like he was shot out of a cannon. I poured on the speed, zoomed past Grant, and continued the pain streak via slamming into Attuma inside a giant missile construct, and following that up with a hard flying Vibration Punch. Ok, I was definitely stronger. Thirty seconds ago, even my best Vibration Punch wouldn't have made this guy take a step back; now I actually succeeded in creating a THOOM of my own (so many THOOMS going around), and increasing Attuma's free fall speed from 300 to 340 mph.

"_Whoa!" _Grant thought to me. "_Nice swing, dude! You been workin' out?!"_

"_Something like that," _I responded. "_Now get serious, we got a bad guy who's face needs punching in!"_

"_I'm always serious! This is me being totally super serious!"_

It wasn't him being all that serious, but it was good enough for me to go on. Together, we poured on the speed, catching up to Attuma in a heartbeat.

Usually, this is the part where everything goes wrong, where the bad guy gets a sudden surge of power and comes back with a vengeance, only that didn't happen…..like at all. First off, while Attuma was fast and strong, he wasn't prepared to take on two people who were just as fast and strong as he was. Grant and I worked out and unspoken, but rhythmic plan of attack. Grant summoned his axe, engulfed it in Geo-Force, and repeatedly kept whacking Attuma where he could get an open shot, always launching him a good three miles with every swing. While I was less up and close with my efforts, I was definitely pulling my own weight. I usually worked from a distance, using the Power Grid to create Phantom Bolts, as well as giant constructs such was hammers, trains, swords, submarines, and mermaid warriors. Grant and I kept up that rhythm, which for the most part, went undisturbed. There were a few instances where Attuma actually did manage to break the chain, but they lasted for maybe 10 seconds (usually less), before either me or Grant would pick up the slack for one another. Case in point, after hitting Attuma with the 50th Phantom Bolt, Grant rushed in for another one of his signature axe swings, only to be blocked by Attuma's trident. Attuma came around with a left cross to his face, and Grant just, and I mean just barely blocked the punch, but as we've previously established Attuma was strong as hell. His fist had so much momentum behind it, that it forced Grant's hand back into his own face, like when a trainer who holds sparring pads doesn't put enough effort into blocking a punch or a kick. The punch sent Grant sprawling about ten feet backwards, and Attuma hefted his trident for a swing that was never gonna see the light of day. Yeah, I didn't know if that trident would be able to pierce his skin (it certainly would've gotten through the armor), but I decided against having some D-List villain whack my friend with his bedazzled trident. I hit him in the face with a point blank Phantom Bolt that shot not even a foot away from his face. He fumbled with the swing, giving Grant more than enough time to recover, and send Attuma packing with a Geo-Force charged front kick. I flew after him, giving him a flying Vibration Punch to the gut, while Grant followed it up with another G-Force charged kick to Attuma's face.

"_Thanks for the save, dude," _he thought to me.

"_Anytime," _I responded.

We resumed our mix of Geo-Titan melee, mixed with Storm-Lord range attacks. Grant steadily put more and more of his strength into each swing, launching Attuma further and further, making the ocean pop with each impact. While doing my best to keep up (oh, how I missed running), I continued doing my job of keeping Attuma off-balance with the steadying increasing sea creature themed constructs up. At one point I started using starfish shurikens, and squid homing missiles; just let that sink in for a moment. But yeah, all quirks aside, Grant and I seemed to be doing great…..then all of a sudden we weren't. Like I said, Grant and I did a bang up job of smacking Attuma around, but someone can only get smacked around in a pattern so much until they break the chain.

After another swing to his face, Attuma managed to roll into a recovery, and block a swing of Grant's axe with his trident. This was the same problem we ran into the first time, and i'm pretty sure Grant wasn't gonna fall for the same trip up twice, which is probably why Attuma used a different trick altogether. As soon as the axe hit the trident, a blastwave of Poseidon Energy knocked him back, and a everything went to $#!+. First, a spiralling blast of water, about the size of a column you'd see on the Lincoln Memorial, knocked Grant downwards at speeds of at least 100 mph. Next, Attuma went buck wild, and created a maelstrom of blade, fist, and trident water constructs. The radius of raining death was so wide, it made me wish he was a good guy, cuz if he were at the battle for the Stone of Hades, there would not be a problem of any kind. Oh, and to add a bit of a cruel sting (literally) to his attack, all of the constructs were P.E. charged. Grant was fine, don't worry about him (that came off a bit too harsh). He was getting smacked around for a bit, Attuma was so gonna pay for that later, but the constructs weren't piercing his skin, or even the armor for that matter. Me on the other hand, while my armor would be fine, if I let any of those constructs hit me without my Thunder Form up, my head would be a used pin cushion. I rocketed at Attuma, phasing as fast as I could. When I made my way through my fist set of tridents, I was prepared for the worst. Pain, adrenaline, agony; I almost closed my eyes in anticipation, and you could not have prepared me for what I actually ended up feeling.

Like I said, I was ready for that odd mix of pain and adrenaline. What I didn't expect, was the strength that came with it. The mix of pain and adrenaline was still there, but compared to what it was a while back, it wouldn't even rate a 4/10. The strength, though? That was off the charts! With every construct that passed through me, it felt like someone was putting some kind of liquid nitrogen steroid into my veins. It felt freezing, but in that good way when you stick your head in a freezer after coming inside from a scorching day (I know i'm not the only one who does that). I felt my muscles surge with the stuff, I felt myself getting stronger and stronger with each passing millisecond. If there was ever a time I didn't want this stuff, I can't remember, cuz I sure as hell wanted it now! I slammed a P.E. charged Vibration punch into Attuma's face, and OH DEAR JESUS! While it definitely wasn't a punch that would measure up to Grant's new strength, it was still enough to shatter a plane, and break the foundation of a skyscraper. Attuma hurtled away spinning. At the speed I punched him at, he probably would've been trucked away at least 100 meters, but Grant wanted some big time payback. He flew straight up, and smashed a fist into a Attuma's gut; also, he was covered in that multi metal, mostly golden looking alloy. I thought that'd be important to mention. He and Attuma shot up 200 meters before Gant hammer punched him back down, and kicked him forward with a giant Geo-Force boot construct. As we pursued our blue punching bag, I noticed something strange about Grant's multi-metal alloy. For some reason, it had glowing green inscriptions plastered all over it. Some Greek, others Norse, there was even Chinese in there. I felt a subtle power humming through it; almost like it was alive.

"_You must've went through hell to get that, huh, Geo-Titan?" _I asked him.

"_In more ways than one," _he responded kinda solemnly. "_I'll tell you about it later."_

He shut off the conversation, and after catching up with Attuma, whacked him with his Geo-Force charged axe. For another 20 seconds or so, everything went along smoothly. Granted, at the rate we were going at, it would probably be another hour or so before we'd get Attuma in the safe landing zone, but….I really didn't think this all the way through. Still, it's not like I had anything better as far as plans went, so I was perfectly content with creating Phantom Bolts and constructs, while Grant continued to punch the token bad guy really, really, really hard. Again, plans like that work, until they suddenly don't.

After taking the 20th axe swing, accompanied by another Phantom Bolt, Attuma recovered 400 meters away from an oncoming Geo-Titan, only this time, I refused to let him take another inch. I used the Power Grid to create a tela sphere around Attuma (about 100 megawatts, give or take). I kept it up for a half second, way more than enough time to zap him hundreds of times, and took it down in time for Grant….to get his axe swing blocked! Ok. NO! Just, just...NO! That was enough voltage to take down a whale, zapping him hundreds of times in a faction of a second! You'd think that would at least make a guy blink. But no, that would be way too easy. Again, this is where I have to give Attuma props. Swirling around him was a body shield made of flowing water. On first glance, it'd look pretty flimsy, but with the P.E. swirling through it as well, the thing could probably hold up against a falling jumbo jet. In other words, after getting lambasted by lightning, Attuma found a way to cut the impact in half. Plus, if he had the time to form a body shield like that in such a small span of time, continued exposure to the stone must've been increasing his speed (is that just a package deal with these things?). Anyway, Attuma twisted Grant's wrist, and batted him away with the flat of his trident at the speed of a missile. I side flipped over him (pretty sure he'd be fine), but before I had a chance to prep for a recovery attack, my Speed Sense activated. I had just enough time to get back into a crouching position, and block the impact of Attuma's trident with my Sky Shield. By this point, the shield had absorbed so much voltage, I was basically carrying a moving truck's worth of grenades around my arm, so as soon as Attuma's trident hit my shield, I let it all go in one huge explosion. Lightning lit up the water like a thunderstorm cloud suddenly transported under the blast lit up everything in an 800 meter radius (above the city, of course), and while I for the most part stood my ground, Attuma may as well have been ejected from a bouncy castle. I flew after him, Grant right behind me, but Attuma wasn't quite done being a pain in the ass to deal with. He recovered, and started blasting pillars of spiralling water at us; along with his usual forte of weapons and predator themed constructs. I put my shield away, and focused on trying not to get utterly destroyed by the onslaught of water, which I surprisingly did pretty well at. Oh, I couldn't maneuver for $#!+ (i'd have to work on that later), but in the meantime, I used the Power Grid to make Attuma's attacks difficult to hit me. The pillars were easy enough to dodge, I created shield constructs to block the weapon constructs, and either shot the predators with Phantom Bolts, or threw explosive dagger constructs into their heads. Oh, and Grant was powering through anything Attuma was throwing at him via flying inside of a green Iron Man construct. Pfft. Sure, why not? Still, for all of our huffin' and puffin', we'd probably just get smacked back to square one, so I tied something other than aiming for a punch.

"_Element Cannon, Geo-Titan!" _I thought to him. "_Go as hard as you can!"_

"_Whoa!" _he thought back to me. "_You sure, dude?"_

"_Yeah, man! Let' do it!"_

I busted out my Thunder Shields, powered them up to a beyond ungodly amount of voltage, and synced my X25 Super Ultra Final Flash, with Grant's equally (if not stronger, good God that guy could dish out the fire power!) destructive Geo-Force cannon. To make matter worse for our blue friend, we opened fire on him at pretty much point blank range. To put it in perspective, my blast was literally big enough to swallow a battleship (Fury would love that), and probably had more than enough destructive power to create a DBZ destruction crater though half of an entire state. Ditto for Grant. The blast was so strong it created reverb created waves, that i'm pretty sure would've been all disaster movie levels of destructive if they were capable of making it to the surface. Attuma was lost in the mix of green and blue, the water was so overloaded with voltage and Geo-Force, I couldn't even properly sense where he was. After keeping the Element Cannon up for a good seven seconds, launching Attuma at least 300 miles out (yeah, really), I told Grant to kill the fireworks, and called for a team meeting.

"_Can you see him, Geo-Titan?" _I asked him.

"_Yeah," _he thought back to me. "_He doesn't look too hurt, but we rattled his cage a little bit."_

"_How far till we clear him out of the city?"_

"_Dude, it's the size of Australia, and to be honest, we're just barely halfway there."_

"_All i'm hearing is do what we did again."_

"_Yeah, you would."_

I ignored that, and started zooming toward Attuma. At this point in my very limited experience with flying, it probably would've taken me a good minute to catch up to him, but I can get real creative with the Power Grid when I need to. As I flew, I focused on the saturated electron trial that I had created via my part in the Element Cannon. I willed the voltage to wake up again, and heighten the speed of my flight pattern, essentially creating a velocity ramp that allowed me to reach up to Mach 5, while collecting enough voltage to overload the Chrysler, and Empire State building. Grant managed to keep up with me just fine, but as we neared Attuma, I told him to back off, and let me get first crack at the big guy. I created another tesla sphere around him for good measure, poured on the speed, and vibrated up for what was probably gonna be my biggest flying punch to date. Yeah, that was an understatement. I hit him with a mix of the Vibration Punch, while unleashing all of the voltage I had collected, resulting in a punch strong enough to decimate at least five city blocks. Attuma took off so fast, it was almost like he disappeared. Grant and I flew in pursuit.

"_Damn, Storm-Lord!" _Grant thought to me. "_You got one hell of a punch!"_

"_You ain't seen nothin yet!" _I thought back to him, as I dematerialized into a lightning bolt.

Grant and I raced after Attuma, though he took the lead on this one (how was he faster than a lightning bolt?). Once he caught up, he summoned his axe, set it ablaze, and had a quick exchange with Attuma, who recovered enough to block his downward swing, and repel him with a spiral blast of water. I picked up the slack though. I zipped around him, and changed from a streak of lightning, to a charging eighteen wheeler, literally trucking Attuma 30 feet forward. Before he could get back in it, I broke my form into 50 giant spiked fists, and wailed into Attuma from all sides. While definitely not the most effective way to get him out of the city (I was basically playing pinball with a sea god), it did a good enough job of keeping him off-balance until Grant got back in the fight.

"_I'm thinking your name should be Captain Try-Hard instead," _he thought to me, as he rushed in to give Attuma another punch to the face.

"_I'm thinking you're just jealous," _I jokingly thought to him, as I kept my flying fists. "_Hell, you're literally green with envy!"_

The funny thing was he actually turned of his flaming/lightningy form for a half second. I so totally count that as a win.

Anyway, we constantly slammed into Attuma for another minute or so, getting closer and closer to the city limits. As we fought, I noticed how much longer my stamina for maintaining Thunder Form 2 felt. Before, the limit clocked at around five minutes before cellular breakdown; now I felt like I could hold it for about six and a half. Still, it's not like Attuma would give me the leg room to test the limits of that. After decking him for the 2,000 time (between the two of us), Attuma stopped us cold with a wall construct. Not just a simple slab of bricks though, i'm talking a Great Wall of China construct, bigger than a skyscraper, wider than a city, that just popped up in the blink of an eye. A few of my fists slammed into it before I pulled my form back together, and went back to normal. Grant on the other hand, charged through the damn thing. Well, charged is a lose term. Tunneled is more like it. Anyway, after getting through to the other side, Attuma, who was casually chilling on the other side, came rushing at him with a stab. Grant gripped his axe, parried the strike with an upwards swing, planted a reverse kick in his chest, and blasted him in the face with a wave of Geo-Force from his eyes. Attuma stumbled back a few feet, giving me an opportunity to get back in the fight. I flew into him with a flying Vibration Punch, though this one didn't seem to have the umph that it usually did. Attuma kinda stammered a bit, but came around with a wide trident swing. I tucked my legs over it, summoned my Sky Shield, but didn't end up using it to block Attuma's best swing; Grant had that covered. Again, I noticed how his trident would give off violent P.E. feedback when it grinded against Grant's axe, not to mention that IRRITATING scraping noise! On the positive side, the huge burst of energy gave me another shot of that addicting surge of strength. I vibrated my shield arm, and smacked Attuma with a hard backhand, sending him sprawling away from Grant. We rushed him again, together this time, but Attuma decided to try again with the constructs and water blasts. It was just another rinse and repeat situation, only with spiked walls flying at us. This time, Grant and I didn't bother with pretense. I flew straight, phasing through the constructs, while he smashed through them. We got so close to Attuma, ready to jump him like there was no tomorrow.

Before we could even make contact though, Attuma twirled his trident, and caught me and Grant in a whirlpool. He spun us for a few seconds (any longer and I was gonna blow chunks), before letting us go in opposite directions. Like always, after splitting us up, the bad guy completely ignored the stronger, way more of a threat target, and came charging after me. Even worse, dude was super fast, like, SMS levels of super fast! I didn't even have time to straighten my form, before having to sloppily block a trident stab with my shield. I managed to twist upright, and throw a hard Vibration Punch, which was blocked by Attuma with a terrifying display of strength. I blasted him in the face with a desperate wave of my Thunder Vision, which benefited me as much as throwing a rubber chicken at his face. My blast was immediately overtaken by a huge wave of Poseidon Energy emanating from Attuma's mouth! It would be one thing if I got slapped away by the sheer power of the blast, but Attuma kept a firm grip on my right fist, keeping me in the thick of the fire. With this much P.E. dousing me at once, the pain was a result of too much of a good thing; I legitimately felt like I was overdosing on some kind of god meth. Thankfully, Grant made sure that didn't last too long. He slammed into Attuma's back, forcing him to let go of me (while making a sound like a coughing cat). Next, he summoned his axe, and swung it upside Attuma's head! The blow didn't kill, but it moved Attuma just enough for me to hit him with a charging bull construct. Grant ignited his axe, and charged Attuma again, getting off two successful swings in, before Attuma blocked his last swing. I rushed in with a shield slam to his gut, and followed it up with a Vibration Punch uppercut. Grant got another punch and axe swing in, but Attuma blasted us away with a P.E. blast wave, and took the fight to us again. The water around us, for like a stadium sized radius, started to twist and change, until me and Grant were surrounded by literally thousands of piranhaoid water constructs.

"HAHAHAHA!" Attuma roared. "DIE, CHILDREN!"

He sicked his constructs on us, and retreated into the background like every token villain ever (I think this guy got the handbook or something).

"_Well this looks fun," _Grant thought to me.

"_Whatever," _I responded. "_I got the ones on the...this side? You get the ones on the that side?"_

"_Works for me."_

I get that sounds really vague and somewhat dumb, but at this point Grant, Allyson and I were so good at fighting things by the hundreds, it may as well have been a daily workout routine for us. I tapped into the Power Grid, focused on the few thousand constructs on my end, and shredded them with a series of Phantom Bolts. Grant created a Geo-Force Hulkbuster around himself, along with a hundred other Iron Man constructs, and absolutely demolished his half of the oncoming constructs via shooting missile constructs, blasting repulsor rays, or just smashing them like flies. Between the two of us, we would have mopped up all the attackers in five minutes tops; that is if Attuma had the patience to let us finish. Instead, Attuma rocketed straight into Grant, who ditched his Hulkbuster construct, and met Attuma head on. Grant rolled with Attuma's tackle, and propelled him off with a leg push. He then twisted into a charging position, summoned his axe, and got off another swing at Attuma's side. Finally, he punched Attuma in the throat with his left fist, spun around into a hard reverse kick to his chest, sending him sprawling backwards. All of that happened within a fraction of a second; I barely had time to see it all. I got back into the fight via slamming a giant baseball bat construct on top of his head, while rejoining the up and close brawl with Grant. For the first few minutes or so, the fight went more or less in our favor. While Attuma was fast enough to compare, that trident was way too long to be effective in close quarters. Every time he tried to swing that thing, Grant would block it with his axe, and leave Attuma open for a shield bash from me, or some kind of Jet Lee move from Grant. There were a few moments where Attuma would burst out of getting beat down, via energy wave, or blast of water, but because this guy had absolutely no experience with fighting with constructs (not to mention not having an imagination outside of primitive weapons), Grant and I were able to get our footing back after a small period of bobbing weaving between constructs. What happened next was so totally my fault; i'll admit that entirely. I got a bit overconfident. Grant and I together were unstoppable. The P.E. that was saturating the battle was only making me stronger and faster, making me hit harder; especially with my Vibration Punches. For a second, I forgot myself, forgot the fact that one of the main reasons villains lose, is the fact that they talk way too much when they should just shut up.

"What's the matter, Attuma?!" I taunted him. "Hard to fight with that glorified pitchfork?!"

I hit him across the face with another Vibration Punch, while Grant got him in the chest with a hard drop kick. We were already propelling Attuma further and further out of the city, albeit much slower now, but that last kick pushed him 10 ft away, giving him time to create a water barrier around himself. Grant and I tried busting through it, but Attuma really put all of himself into keeping that up. When the barrier did come down, it wasn't of our doing. The water started to glow with Poseidon Energy, giving Grant and I the hint to give him some breathing room to blow up. He of course did, but there was something drastically different about him this time around. His trident, what used to be his trident, was now a long sword with jagged points going down the length of the blade. For those of you that have every played Infinity Blade (it's so good!), just imagine the Dark Knight's blade, but golden. The Stone of Poseidon was still locked into it, just in the hilt of the blade; also, Attuma drew his other sword, which was an exact replica, just with blue Tron lines going through it.

"What was that you said to me, boy?!" Attuma yelled at me. "That it was impractical to fight with my 'glorified pitchfork'?!" Well, come and test your mettle against me now!"

He was kidding right? I mean, sure he might catch a better beat without the spear, but he was outnumbered, and if not outgunned, sure as hell didn't have the chops to make good use of his power. I summoned my Thunder Shields, and after a brief power up, let loose another X10 Super Ultra Final Flash. Attuma must've had a death wish or something, cuz he didn't move, and I saw no signs of him making any shielding moves, so he must've taken that head on, right? Yeah, my Speed Sene had something else to say about that. Attuma was literally right behind me and Grant, one of his swords was actually touching my armor, was a millisecond away from cutting into it and me! I swiveled around it (Grantt parried the other away from him), raised a fist for a Vibration Punch, but Attuma was too fast to get tripped up by that one again. He slashed at my chest, forcing me to pull back and summon my Sky Shield. While I was safe (for now), Attuma was far from done. Upon impact, he made an explosion of water and Poseidon Energy detonate with the force of a tank shot, sending me careening sideways at like 90 mph. While he did that, Atumma also propelled Grant away with a spiral blast of water, and willed the sea to create a current that pulled him further and further out. In other words, Attuma really wanted to single me out. He swam after me, practically licking his chops, and in a different turn of strategy, applied pressure. The water started to harden into spear heads about the size of mini fridge doors, and shot themselves at me. I tapped into the Power Grid, and created shield constructs to block them all, but the shots were so fast, it was like trying to block bullets from high caliber sniper rifles at point blank range; one false move, I get shanked in the head. The effort took so much concentration, I had absolutely no time to get properly set up for Attuma, who was just getting into his zone. He came in with a hard double slash to my shield, making another detonation go off, and send me sailing back faster. He created a wall of P.E. charged spikes for me to break my fall, but I phased through them, getting an extra surge of strength while I was at it. Thank God he didn't piece that part together. Anyway, it's not like that mattered, cuz as the water around me swirled and took form in like a tenth of a second, I found myself in the jaws of a thrashing sea serpent! Ok, now this was getting embarrassing! Forget survival for a moment, I was being used as a f*(#!^$ chew toy! This. Was. Unexpectable.

"FRET NOT BOY!" Attuma roared at me in laughter. "THE BEAST IS FOND OF YOU, HE EVEN WANTS TO SHARE YOU WITH HIS PACK!"

Before I could object to that, I felt something bite down hard on my legs, arms, even my head! Oh, my Thunder Form was still up; plus I was using the whole body shield function, so it's not like I was reduced to hamburger meat. Still, if you wanna tell me that getting chomped on by six different sea serpent constructs isn't scary, or the least bit stressful, I need to get a hold of whatever it is you're smoking. As was such, I panicked hard, and as of late, when I panic, things blow up. I discharged an explosive wave big enough to wreck three city blocks, which I hope was loud enough to cover the fact that I screamed like a girl. The sea serpent constructs were blown apart like sand in a fan, but Attuma was giving me absolutely no time to get my footing back, and rushed in for a killing blow, My Speed Sense helped me just barely block his double stab in time, but the next swing of one of Attuma's swords was going straight to my thighs. I tucked my legs in, gave them a vibrate, and dropkicked Attuma in the chest. While I didn't kick him far enough to actually get any time to breathe, I managed to bust out my Thunder Sword; God knows I needed it. Attuma looked at me for a few seconds, and start twirling his swords. I flinched. Usually when he started moving his weapons, I would go on some sort of ride, but again, Attuma was fighting a lot different now. As he twirled his blade, water swirled and collected around them while mixing with P.E. My sword and shield were already wreathed in lightning (Thunder Form is like a gift that keeps on giving), so I couldn't exactly make a big show of anteing up for a brawl. I simply got loose, said a prayer to God, Zeus, and Poseidon (not kidding), and charged Attuma head on.

First things first, in a clash of brute strength (like every fight i've ever been in), i'd lose every time. I may have been pretending to fight Attuma on his turf, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I had to accept and adjust for the fact that me and Attima were the same in speed, optimistically speaking, so that was one advantage I usually had out of the window. As we clashed weapons, I made sure to discharge a small burst of voltage with every strike. Not only did this help me not get thrown around like a hackey sack, but it was also saturating the water with residual voltage. That would be extremely useful coming up. I'll say this, if nothing else, Attuma was a damn good swordsman. He moved his blades fluently and with purpose. If I dodged or blocked a strike, he rarely wasted time doing the cliche power struggle. Like an airbender, when he met resistance, he changed and adapted to try and find a way around it. Every slash, stab, feint, etc., was either meant to kill, trip me up, make me too closed up on defense, or over extend my reach on the offensive. If I count the number of times I was almost taken out, i'd be well in my hundreds within the first 30 seconds. That's the other thing about the fight, Attuma and I were going at it like speed demons, putting out 50-60 slashes a second. That coincided with why Attuma was unusually short on the P.E. blasts and water constructs; he was doing his absolute damndest to keep Grant out of the fight.

Yeah, for once I couldn't blame Grant for being lazy. About 20 miles west of where we were fighting, the sea had stopped pulling Grant, and was now trying to tear him apart. In all honesty (my Thunder Sense was really improving), it was like an underwater supercell 10 miles wide, and made entirely of water and P.E. energy. The water thrashed around wildly at 300 miles per hour, keeping Grant off-balance, in addition to the legion of constructs flying at him. Swords, tridents, sharks, sea serpents, humanoid warriors, etc. Grant was doing his best to stay ahead of the game, hell, those constructs maybe got three good licks on him before he ripped them to shreds, but they were reconstructing like Hydra heads. Attuma was forcing the sea in on itself, making sure Grant didn't have the time to take an inch. In the meantime, I was doing relatively ok, but I definitely wasn't gonna get too comfortable fighting blue boy by myself. Like it or not, I had no chance of winning this without my big gun.

I blocked another one of Attuma's stabs with my shield, parried away the other slash, and kicked him in the chest with a lightning charged Vibration kick, punting him away like a football. After four minutes of fighting, I had Attuma's number….sorta. I wasn't gonna win this match with one slash or stab to the right area, but only because that body shield was a thing (why do they always have body shields?). While the first two minutes of the fight consisted of me trying not to get killed, my reflexes and observation skills were automatically feeding me the edge piece by piece. What I mean by that is at times my body would block, parry, or dodge attacks based purely on "oh God, i'm bout to get shanked!" While that was going on, my brain was working double time, analyzing Attuma's fight pattern, noticing things like his stance, striking positions, block patterns, dodging techniques, etc. I was able to look at small details, like the way his joints would bend, facial indicators, and the speed and angles of the the way his blades would move and change due to blocks or parries, and predict where his next strike would be, and how he might execute it, like some sorta on the job algorithm. Oh, and with the Poseidon Energy surging about like wildfire, my stamina was pretty much always on high, my strength good enough for me to somewhat matter to him. Anyway, l launched Attuma back to me with a Phantom Bolt, ducked down, and used the momentum to slam his face hard into my shield. I backtracked, giving Attuma the time he needed to recover, and got myself ready for his assault. He came at me with a big GRRAAAH!, both of his swords spread to either side of him. Too easy. This guy was gonna feint two wide swings, but follow through with a right slash to my legs, which would follow into him trying to stab my right side with his other sword. How'd I know this? Again, muscle memory, and systematic prediction. Because I had fought Attuma for so long, and because he was using the best of what he had to end me, I knew his next moves before he did. I went along with his movements for the beginning, and pretended he actually faked me out with his sloppily telegraphed feint. I just barely tucked my legs over his leg sweep, then pulled the rug out from under him by spinning into a reverse kick, blocking his stab with my shield, then bashing it into his face again. Whenever I threw Attuma for a loop like that, he flail a bit, sending waves of P.E. charged waves of water at me. I ducked under my shield, took a few hits, and retaliated by slamming some Phantom Bolts into Attuma from all sides. I rocketed forward, slammed him in the face with my shield again, before launching it upwards for a second; giving me a chance to change my sword into spear mode, and go absolute ham on underwater Conan The Barbarian. Again, in a straight up fight, there was absolutely no way in hell i'd win against Attuma, but speed and maneuvering would help me remedy that. I slashed his chest as hard as I could ten times, recycling the momentum, blocking his counter strikes, and using as many kicks as I could to keep him from getting his hold back. When I felt like I was losing control, I started circling him as I slashed, always making sure to watch his movements, and change directions frequently. For the next minute and a half (man, can only imagine how Grant must'e been feeling) Attuma wasn't even able to lay a hand on me. I got in about 1,000 slashes, 600 kicks, and 10 punches in on the blue bastard. Every counter slash and stab was either quickly blocked or dodged, and after a blast of lightning to the face for good measure, i'd continue on with my Jason Voorhees slash fest (seriously, with the name Jason, Halloween season is so annoying). It wasn't until Attuma launched me away with an explosive wave of Poseidon energy, that the wombo combo was derailed.

Did that hurt? Yeah. Yeah it did. In that moment, I realized that P.E. to me as beneficial in gradual doses, but all at once with that much power, hurt like hell. Still, despite feeling like a truck was dropped on my face, it was a learning experience. See, while I getting a baseline concussion, I was still able to sense how my significant ally was doing in his struggle to overtake the ocean. As soon as Attuma let loose that explosive wave, aka the moment he focused power away from keeping Grant down, the maelstrom wavered. It was only for a moment, maybe a second and a half, but his entire super storm almost dissolved away, before he brought it back up at the last second. Ok, Attuma needed absolute focus to keep the storm up. Got it. Now to break that up. I summoned my Sky Shield back to me just barely in time to block one hell of a double spiral blast from Attuma. Stupid. So stupid. I completely ignored the power building up in Attuma's swords. I've used that same tactic at least five other times, and I couldn't see it coming. While I was completely safe behind my Sky Shield, the impact was so real. At 300 mph, and with about 100,000 pounds per square inch, even with an indestructible shield guarding me, I felt like I was getting drawn and quartered by a fleet of blastoi (is that plural for Blastoise?). I dipped backwards, going with the momentum, and letting the blast coast over me, before flying back at Attuma; had to keep him in that electrical sweet spot if I wanted to have a snowballs chance of knocking Attuma off his game. Instead of a collision, I did a twisting flip over him, backtracked away from Attuma's trident swing (apparently he could switch between the forms), and threw my shield at Attuma's face, willing all the voltage in it to explode all at once. $#!+ got super real after that. Again, I was basically setting up a rapid minefield for Attuma to blow up in. Once the voltage from the shield went off, I made the Power Grid go absolutely ape$#!+. I ignited all of the latent electrical energy in the immediate area, releasing a flash wave of about 500 megawatts of power, effectively flooring Attuma if there was a floor to send him crashing down to. I kept up the voltage storm, igniting wave after wave of lightning, onslaughting Attuma with thousands of megawatts. After igniting and sustaining at least 10,000 megawatts of power, I let myself become one with the voltage, and continued to put the squeeze on Attuma. I twisted and shaped myself into hundreds of barraging constructs (insert most wild animals, tanks, battleships, missiles, swords, and mythical monsters), lightning bolts, and concentrated power blasts. Every half second was a vortex of a million volts of doom for Attuma. I assume he tried to hold onto his control of the whole "Down with Geo-Titan" campaign, but it's pretty hard to concentrate on anything when your entire body must be screaming "Oh God, everything hurts!" As was such, I could feel Attuma's grip over the sea fade, as he did his best to keep his body shield from giving out on him. I could hear (sorta), the boom that was Grant flying towards the fight, and decided to not let him fly into another violent energy storm. I collected all of myself into a giant hand, big enough to grip ten skyscrapers, and plucked Attuma away like a wad of used gum. I launched him away so fast, I could hear the sonic boom as he plummeted through the water. I willed myself to go back to my physical body, activated my Thunder Form, and flew after Attuma. While flying, I noticed how...different I felt. My Thunder Form was a lot more violent. Usually all it did was surge around my immediate body space, with a few stray crackles of energy. Now, it was violently discharging miniature lightning bolts that could've deep fried any surrounding electronics. Also, and this is probably something that I was ignoring in the heat of battle, my cells were starting to expand. I immediately knew it was because of being saturated with Poseidon Energy, and I knew this was probably gonna mutate me in some potentially life killing way; I just hoped I wouldn't have to put my team through me almost dying again. Pretty sure that's the type of 'bonding' experience you wanna have only once.

Anyway, Grant intercepted me, and we caught up to Attuma together, though he took the lead this time. Instead of his usual axe swing method, Grant summoned a big chunk of that metal he somehow always can pluck out of thin air, and shot it at Attuma. The metal encased him in a ball of….whatever the hell that thing was made of, about 8 ft in height and width. Grant made the ball surge with Geo-Force, and from the echo that I was hearing, Attuma was getting the Grant style tesla sphere experience, which didn't stop there. The water around us started to heat up while turning green. Before I knew it, Grant and I were inside a giant Chinese Dragon construct that had it's jaws crunched hard on Attuma's ball (shut up). Ok. Grant did not care whether I lived or died. That's a fact. How else do you describe it when someone wraps you in a construct of green lightning and fire, without being sure it won't harm you? Oh wait, I know, being a dick!

"WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!" I yelled at him as we continued zooming forward. "YOU COULD'VE KILLED ME! ARE YOU INSANE!"

"SHUT UP, STORM-LORD!" Grant yelled back.

A weird mix of emotions rolled through me at the same time. The first was knee jerk anger. I don't usually get yelled at, people usually know better (my God, I sound like a villain). If this were anyone else, at any other time, there was a decent chance that the poor sap would get his face busted. Still, this wasn't anyone else, and that tied into the other emotion that struck me hard: pure fear. I wasn't stupid enough to believe I could beat Grant, not even on my best day, especially not now. The look in his eyes was beyond just being pissed, this guy looked like he was gonna explode and take a city with him. The terrifying thing was I could tell that anger (at least most of it) wasn't specifically because of me snapping at him. Grant was just angry, full of rage just because. In my town, that always leads to one or more people in body bags.

"I HAD IT UNDER CONTROL!" he continued. "BESIDES, WE WERE TAKING WAY TOO LONG TO GET HIM OUTTA THE CITY! WE'RE DOING THIS MY WAY NOW!"

And now i'm all angry. He was right of course, it was gonna take forever to get Attuma out of the city my way. At least now we had a steady transportation system out of the city (all aboard the Dragon Express). Still, I couldn't let him get the last word in; i'm petty like that sometimes.

"And what exactly is your big plan, Geo-Titan?!" I snapped back. "Please, do-"

Attuma banged and pounded at the inside of his ball, making muffled threats and boasts.

"SHUT UP!" Grant and I yelled at the same time.

Grant actually made the dragon construct chomp down hard a few times to make sure Attuma got the message.

"Ok!" he yelled back at me, his voice sounding a lot less "everything should die". "Step 1: Get out of the city! We're basically there now! Step 2: Pound him into the dirt! Step 3: Keep punching him till' he stops moving!"

Not exactly a plan worthy of Athena (more up the alley of Ares), but it worked before, why not now? Grant kept the Dragon Express moving until we had zoomed past the city limits, as well as the royal palace in no time. I got a bit concerned when we kept going for another 30 miles or so, but i'm not one to be a back seat driver. After getting far from anything that could be potential property damage, Grant made the dragon take a 90 degree turn straight up, and started transferring all of the energy into the axe, until it was just me, him, and Attuma in a golden ball. With a huge roar, Grant slammed the axe into the ball, sending it crashing 100 ft below into the ocean floor like a comet; not to mention making a boom loud enough to hear across a state.

"THIS IS FOR DROPPING A HURRICANE ON MY HEAD!" he shouted as he hurled the axe down at Attuma.

The explosion was, or was going to be the most impressive display of godly destruction ever. The blast was so big, it covered and destroyed five miles worth of rock and land, while reaching so high, it practically nipped at our feet before Grant willed the blast to stop and condense on top of Attuma. While the explosion itself was technically receding, Attuma was basically taking mini nukes rapid fire. If we weren't trying to end him, I might've felt bad. Anyway, Grant lit himself up, and flew down while summoning his axe, leaving me to follow. Attuma was definitely dazed from the explosion, which didn't help him any as Grant came down and whacked him across the ocean floor. Grant got off two more hits that broke sound barrier, and sent shockwaves for miles. I was able to get a few Phantom Bolts in here and there, but Grant had some serious bones to pick with our boy Attuma. After another cross punch to the face, Attuma blocked Grant's next swing, blasted him away with a small P.E. shockwave, and began to fight back hard. First, Attuma changed his trident to a sword, summoned his other sword to his free hand (because magic), and backtracked away from Grant as fast as he could, while sending waves of energy charged water at us. Grant and I pursued, either dodging, or creating constructs to block the impact. When the water around us started to swirl a little faster, I gave that a giant "hell no" in my head, and floored Attuma with a well placed Phantom Bolt to the top of his head. He tried to get up, but I created a spiked trash compactor, and made it smash on top of him a few dozen times while we caught up to him. Attuma wasn't able to get up, even after I cut the compactor business, and I noticed how heavy everything seemed to be getting the closer I got to him.

"_Uh, Geo-Titan?" _I asked him.

"_Gravity manipulation," _he simply responded. "_I can do that now. Don't sweat it, just wanna make sure I line this douche up for a grand slam. By the way, you should probably get under your shield."_

I did him one better. I got behind my Shy Shield, put a vault construct around myself, and waited for the bomb to drop. As best as I could tell, Grant did exactly that. He fused his axe with a $#!+ ton of Geo-Force, slammed it on Attuma's chest, and set of an explosion that would've decimated a block of skyscrapers; at least that's what the ground was telling me. Yeah, a tremor that had to be an at least 6 on the Richter scale ripped through the ground like a shiver. The Geo-Force either went through, or over Attuma, but Grant kept the blast contained to Attuma's body frame, making a nuke just for him. I remember that being a specific thing he mentioned in the debrief of his battle against The Brotherhood….and what happened immediately afterwards. While it wouldn't be as big of a change as tuning a desert into a forest, i'm pretty sure changing ten square miles of dirt and silt into grass was still something to worry about. Grant kept punching and slashing at Attuma until big blue blocked his swings, created a small bubble of swirling water around himself, and pushed Grant off of him. Enough with Grant with his need to dick measure, it was time I get back in this fight. I flew after Attuma, while Grant recovered and did the same; each of us attacking him from either side. Before Attuma could catch his bearings, I rocked him in his left side with a flying Vibration Punch, while Grant used his head for a football. Attuma went staggering backwards, but not far enough to where me and Grant weren't on his ass, punching and slashing at least 500 times per second between the two of us. After a few seconds of constantly wailing on him, Grant floored Attuma again with a hammer punch to the top of his head, and began to restrain him to the ground via Nature Force (he made sure we knew the difference between GF and NF) charged grass and tree bark cables. I'm saying it right now, Hannah and every other nature enthusiast I knew (or didn't know) would drop their panties for Geo-Titan in a split second.

While the grass and stuff were trying to keep Attuma down, Grant and I kept him from struggling, via punching, stomping, and blasting him so much, you'd swear we were initiating him into a metahuman gang (do those exist?). That's not to say it was easy, Attuma struggled like a mother, almost got a few swings in on me, but for the better part of a minute, we managed to keep him down and stomp em' in the nuts (Boondocks reference). That was all well and good, until I almost got stabbed with a sword. Even while being beat down like a railroad spike, Attuma somehow found the concentration to summon one of his swords (the one with the stone in it) back to his hand and take a wild swing at me. I quickly summoned my Sky Shield to block the sword, only to leave myself open to a monstrous backhand from Attuma, that had me tasting grass and silt. I turned around to see Grant get a P.E. charged spiral blast to the chest, then knocked into the dirt with a P.E. bolt from above. Attuma created another maelstrom of weapons, this time from above and from everywhere. I flew over to Grant, created a barrier, and yelled at him to help me out. Before long, we were nice and cozy together in an energy force field, trying to hold up against the constructs, P.E. bolts, and Attuma slamming us with a giant f*(#ing octopus construct!

"Well this is fun," Grant said to me, though I noticed a lack of strain in his voice. "Got any ideas, Storm-Lord?"

"Not really, man," I said, shaking my head. "I tried impaling him with his own trident. That didn't work. Slammed him with a trillion volts of everything I got. Still didn't work. Think we can fall back on punching and kicking till' his heart stops beating?"

"Can't do it bro. Gaea says it's like trying to kill the ocean, we could fight for years and still not make a dent."

"What if we break the trident? From what i've seen, the stone's energy is being transferred to the trident, swords, and armor. Blue boy can't waterbend without his trident, and if we can snap it and take the stone, he'd bleed dry."

"That's not a bad way to go, but even that's a no go."

"How? Can't you metal bend now? Is the trident made of some kinda alien metal?"

"Nah, it's an alloy of gold and titanium, same as Iron Man's armor, but the problem is the stone. For some reason, the energy is interfering with my power over metal, I can't control it, and it seems to hold up pretty well against my axe."

"So we're screwed?"

"Maybe not. Everyone has some kinda weakness, we just gotta find it. Till then, let's keep the pressure on, throw in a few plays to keep him off-balance, and hope he slips up."

"We're screwed."

"Totally. Element Cannon on my mark?"

"Let's do it."

We merged the energies of our respective barriers, targeted Attuma, and without dropping our protection, blasted him out of his octopus construct with the the combined might of lightning and Geo-Force, strong enough to blast through the hull of a submarine. As Attuma staggered back, I summoned my Thunder Sword, and flew after him alongside Grant.

Getting the upper hand was relatively easy all things considered. Grant came in hard, slashing away with his Geo-Force charged axe, while I whacked him sparingly with my sword, focusing more on hitting him with Phantom bolts and constructs. This worked for a while, about three minutes, before Attuma got back in the game with a bit of a vengeance. First, he blocked one of Grant's axe swings, blasted me away with a pulse of water, and while pushing back against Grant, tried to keep me from getting back into the fight via construct assaults. They were, all of them, mermaid warriors with swords, rapiers, tridents, etc., and I was extremely unimpressed. On one hand, splitting us up may have been semi effective when he isolated me from Grant, but unlike myself, Grant had more than enough strength and skill to hold his own against Attuma. I was only away from the fight for maybe seven seconds tops, but in that time, Grant had summoned his sword to accompany his axe, and began to Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Liu Kang the f*(# outta Attuma. Every strike Attuma dished out, Grant either easily blocked, dodged, and capitalized. If Attuma swung too wide, Grant would do something along the lines of ducking, coming up with a high knee to the chest, and wailing at Attuma's chest, arms, and head escrima style. It was almost embarrassing to sense how beat Grant had Attuma; circling him effortlessly, attacking joints, kidney areas, even using blasts of Geo-Force from his eyes to keep him further off-balance. Even worse, Attuma's get out of jail free card (the way he'd use blastwaves of water to interrupt an attack) got completely shut down by Grant. While Attuma was probably gonna cry about Grant stealing his fashion sense, Grant wrapped his special metal around his battle suit, which was sturdy enough to take Attuma's desperate "get off me!" responses. If anything, I was probably doing Grant a disservice by rejoining the fight, but i'll be damned if i'll sit by and let him do all the work. I phased through Attuma's mermaid warrior constructs, flew around to his back, and slammed a hard Vibration Punch to the his mid spine, while Grant planted a boot in his chest. Body shield or not, Attuma felt that, and sounded off with a huge "ACK!" I slammed my lightning wreathed sword upside his head, used the momentum to spin into a round house to his side, and phased through a desperate sword swing to my back. Attuma managed to get off a sloppy backhand swing at me (Grant was still tearing him up from the front), but I easily blocked the strike, although I forgot about the whole swirling water around the swords, not to mention the fact that even while under heavy assault, Attuma could still throw a mean swing. As such, I got thrown backwards a little bit, but came back with a Vibration Hammer Punch to the top of Attuma's head, sending him down several feet down from me and Grant.

"_Delta Bomb!" _Grant thought to me. "_Serve it up!"_

Straight above our heads, I created a ball of voltage, about the size of a soccer ball, worth 100,000 volts. Grant did a twisting backflip, and kicked it as hard as he could Fifa style on top of Attuma's head (was aspirin a thing in Atlantis?). The explosion was moderate compared to ones we're usually know for (have to work on that), but we still at least sounded off with the force to level a city block, so it's not like I could exactly complain about it. Grant and I flew down after a spiraling Attuma, and decked him in the chest with a team up flying punch; helping on his way back to the ground. Grant flew ahead to try and pin him to the ground via falling knee to the chest, but Attuma created a barrier strong enough to keep him out, then transformed it into a shark head shooting out a water pillar. I tapped into the Power Grid, dropped a Zeus Cannon on top of Attuma, shattering his barrier and then some, then flew down after him.

"_Storm-Lord!" _Grant thought to me as he caught up. "_I'm upping the gravity to X3! Think you can handle it?!"_

"_Let's find out!" _I thought back to him. "_You got my back?!"_

"_Always!"_

I came down as a bolt of lightning, retook my solid form, summoned my Thunder Shields, and after a quick charge, blasted Attuma's head at point blank range. While not nearly at the level of X10 Super Ultra Final Flash, it was still within at least twice the level of Final Flash boomage, which would surely add to Attuma's head trauma. Grant landed boots to chest on top of Attuma, and I moved to the side as he started slamming his blazing axe into the poor sap's head, making the ground shake. As Grant beat Attuma down, the grass started glowing, and began to restrain the warlord. While that was going on, roots as thick as telephone poles wrapped around Attuma's swords and pulled them away from him. The gravity around me started to increase, it was a bit harder to move, but not by too much.

"_I got this!" _Grant thought to me. "_Get to the sword, try and get the stone out of it!"_

I dashed forward, locked on to the sword with the stone in it, and summoned my own sword. Ok, so the stone was locked in the hit of Attuma's sword, I couldn't dig it out with my fingers, so it was time to do some mining. I lit up my sword, grabbed Attuma's by it's pommel, and after setting it blade first in the dirt, slashed my sword against the hilt, and held it for as long as I could. I'll say this, whatever I was doing, it at least looked like progress was being made. The stone started violently spewing out Poseidon Energy, like someone who had way more than a few too many to drink. This would've felt like an acid bath beforehand, but now it was actually felt great! Here's hoping I wouldn't OD on godly energy (again). The grinding noises weren't doing any favors for me though. I kept our swords grinding against each other for the better part of a full minute, drinking in the Poseidon Energy, and wishing I had earplugs. Grant was doing fine by the way. Attuma bucked and kicked, and occasionally would free an arm away, and try for a desperate swing, but Grant would floor him again with a blast of Geo-Force from his eyes, and reinforce his restraints. For another 30 seconds, this process seemed to be working, I could even swear I was starting to make some progress with the drilling thing I was doing. Of course nothing ever lasts forever, especially not when me and my team are on top. I didn't notice it at first. With so much foreign energy polluting the space they were in, my Thunder Sense couldn't track Attuma and Grant very well; for what I could sense, they were just a big bonfire of something other. That bonfire suddenly got bigger, like someone dropped a truck of gas on top of it. Also, while I was drilling into Attuma's sword, Grant was throwing blows hard enough to shake the earth, and make shockwaves that could be felt for miles (my dreads kept getting in my face, should've tied them back). Because of the….let's call it sensory confusion, when the energy spiked, and I felt a boom that may as well have been a space shuttle taking off, I didn't think anything of it, just Grant letting off a bit more steam. Too late, I realized Grant was the one blasting off, and that big spike of energy was about to steamroll me!

With only a millisecond to spare, I backflipped over Attuma, though I brushed the energy feedback coming off of him, which felt like getting dunked in bucket of ice water. I recovered, tapped into SMS, and after comprehending what it was that I was seeing, went into Thunder Form 2 immediately! Attuma was more or less a engulfed in a violent blue bonfire.t. He was roaring in pain, not victory or triumph, and I had a hunch that he was actually feeling the effects of the Poseidon Energy, rather than the trident and armor being used as conduits. For some reason, it looked like his body were rejecting the energy, but that wouldn't stop him from being hella strong. I slammed him into the ground as a lightning bolt, reshaped into a giant gorilla, and started pounding away as hard as I could. I managed to keep him down for a total of five seconds, and 800 consecutive punches, before Attuma quite literally blew me away with a heaping load of Poseidon Energy. Again, this wasn't damning; Thunder Form to could take head on energy distortion, the only problem was how spread out it scattered me. Basically imagine being Mr. Potato Head, and realizing after a really bad fall, your body parts have been strewn across a really big living room. For me, it was like ten times worse. In Thunder Form 2, I didn't have a sense of body. While I could maintain a humanoid form, I couldn't exactly feel anything other than being a big wad of energy. Now, with no sense of self of cohesion, being spread across a large body of water with no way to even distinguish where my hands and feet were, I gotta admit, I was panicking big time. Forget topping Attuma, no use trying to win a fight if I was already dead!

I focused on trying to get myself together through sheer will power. Basically, because I was still conscious, I imagined a giant net (metaphorical) spanning however long I could make it reach, and locate all of myself. Again, it's kinda chilling when you can feel yourself in 30 different places, yet still not be able to figure out which part of that a leg, arm, or hand. The good news was that I was just scattered so thin that I dissolved into the Power Grid (better subatomic than dead), all I had to do was bring myself together again (Humpty Dumpty would be jelly ). I willed the parts of myself in the Power Grid to ignite, and shoot straight up to one focal point. It took less than a second to reform, and take my physical form again, though my partner in battle would assure i'd ditch it before I could get over the shock.

I felt it coming before Grant gave me the heads up, but it took him to scream in my head "_DUDE, GET OUTTA THE WAY!"_, before I shot up as fast as I could as a bolt of lightning. On the way down to Attuma (who had gotten a hold of his trident again), and I can't stress how literal I am being right now, was a golden f*(#!*% battleship, blazing with enough Geo-Force to set half a city on fire! It was the most beautiful, most terrifying display of power i've ever seen in my life. 90,000 tons, going at least 500 mph, probably enough power to out shine a nuke, and again, a golden ship blazing with green fire and lightning! This is probably (definitely) gonna be offensive on multiple levels, but the only way I can accurately describe this is as the Titanic getting Hindenburged on it's way to Valhalla. Before Attuma could get the memo that the god of all catastrophes was about to slam on to of his head….well, that thing I just said happened. The impact of the ship actually crashing into the dirt was enough wreck half of Manhattan; the actual explosion (which got swallowed into the earth) would've finished off the other half and then some! I honestly couldn't tell you if Attuma survived something like that; hell, I don't know if the Hulk could take a shot like that.

"_ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY INSANE?!" _I yelled in Grant's head. "_HOW...WHA….DUDE!"_

"_Oh, shut up, Storm-Lord," _Grant thought calmly, as he floated down next to me. "_I mean come on, you gotta admit that was the big kahuna of all epic explosions! Besides, if anything was gonna put blue boy on his ass for good, a flaming battleship to the top of his stupid helmet's bound to do it!"_

I wanted refute that so bad, but that was pretty much the soundest logic i'd hear all day. Unfortunately, bad guys really don't get the concept of staying down. The ground below us rumbled a bit, and a roaring blue comet shot up at me and Grant. Gotta say, Attuma was looking a lot better with his trident in hand. His bonfire had died down, and he didn't look like he had to take an atomic $#!+. That gave him some free concentration to do that whole villain monologue thing.

"YOU DARE TO STRIKE ME, ATTUMA, LORD OF ATLANTIS, WITH YOUR PUNY SURFACE WEAPONS?!" he bellowed. "I WILL GRIND YOUR BONES TO DUST FOR THAT INSULT!"

"_You were saying?" _I thought to Grant.

"_Shut up, Storm-Lord,"_ he thought back to me. "_Just…..goddammit!"_

He created a giant dryer construct around Attuma, gave him a quick spin, and recycled the energy into a tennis racket, slamming the warlord back to the ground. Without speaking to each other, we shot straight down, both equally frustrated with how long this was taking.

Attuma was definitely one for self improvement, i'll give him that much. As Grant and I punched and slashed at him, he started to maneuver a lot more, never standing his ground for too long before retreating backwards at a comfortable pace. I had to call Delta Speed Thrasher on him a few times just to get a hold on the fight again. Also, when Grant and I did manage to get a decent hold, Attuma would bust out in a more graceful way than he usually did. Rather than trying to blow us away with another pulse of water, he made the water around us shift into a miniature whirlpool, and launch me and Grant in opposite directions, before going after one of us (usually me) for a kill. Attuma didn't do this too often, but when he did, it almost always ended with a golden sword in my gut. Thankfully, I could fall back on my Sky Shield and Grant to bail me out. Grant and I redoubled our efforts over the next five minutes, slashing, punching, and blasting away at Attuma, hoping we'd get a lucky break. Attuma made sure we wouldn't have it easy though. For one, even though Grant was owning him (dude was punching so hard, he could cause 20 foot waves just by clapping underwater) in the close combat aspect, Attuma had gotten wicked good at using constructs on a wide scope. He wrapped himself in a hard water body shield strong enough to take hits from Grant, which allowed him to keep up his concentration. The guy assaulted us with everything under the sea he could think of, each construct big enough to swallow a gas tankard. If not for me stopping him at all his turns, Grant and I would already be fish paste. On one end, I stopped ten giant eel construct from closing in on us via Spartan shield phalanx. At the same time, i'd stop a school of giant swordfish from attacking, by igniting the area with a mother load of voltage. While that was going on, I literally had to off four different Antarctic Leviathan constructs by impaling them with Zeus Cannons. Did I forget to mention the fact that this was all happening simultaneously, in the span of 5-10 seconds at a time? Forget crosswords and brain teasers, assessing, adapting, and reacting to an onslaught of water constructs was the best way to workout a brain that could digest textbooks! So yeah, this battle was a sight to behold. What with the mix of my lightning, Grant's Geo-Force, and Attuma's constructs/Poseidon Energy, it was like the July 4th, New Years, and Disney World fireworks display were having a threeway (I love that analogy).

"_Storm-Lord, Geo-Titan?!_" Allyson thought to us (nice of her to check in). "_I can hear and feel shockwaves coming from the direction that's not where ya'll are supposed to be! What in God's name are you two doing?! Are any of you hurt and/or on the verge of death?!"_

"_Whoa there, Sunbird!" _I assured her. "_We're good….sorta. Long story short, Attuma has the stone, we got him out of the city, he's crazy strong, we're busting our butts trying to stop him….and my body is drinking in the Stone of Poseidon's energy, which may or may not be a good thing. I mean, it's making me stronger, so I assume i'll be all good and not die from god poisoning."_

"_Wow. Guess boys will be boys."_

"_The hell's that s'posed to mean?!" _Grant thought to her indignantly.

"_That without me," _Allyson continued. "_You and Storm-Lord would either kill each other, destroy everything in your path, or die. Don't believe me? Grant you blew four holes in the palace on a whim, and got shanked by Goblin the day before. Storm-Lord, you literally overdosed on your own power, and got into a fight with you friend, on the first mission. Who saved you two? Oh yeah, me. So now that we've established how much you testosterone junkies need me, how can I help?"_

Wow. Just. Wow. I….fellas out there…...this is why we can't have nice things.

"_How about flying over here and helping us?" _I thought to her, trying to hide the burn she just gave me and Grant. "_You sound like everything's under control on your end."_

"_Sorry," _she thought back to me. "_No can do. I gotta guard Namorita. After we took the throne back, Llyra bolted, but now she keeps sending in these shadow monster things at us."_

Shadow monster things?! Suddenly I was having bad vibes from my dream.

"_You ok?" _I asked her.

"_I'm fine," _she casually responded. "_They look and growl real tough, but they fall hook, line, and sinker for the sun blast/Taylor Swift combo!"_

"_What?!" _Grant and I thought too her dumbfounded.

"_I'll fill you in later," _she thought while laughing at us. "_But seeing as i've already beaten two baddies with Poseidon Power, maybe I can give you guys some pointers?"_

"_Shows what you know, Sunbird!" _Grant thought to her. "_I killed….er….let's just say it's easier to beat a squad of enemies who get the second rate treatment. The actual source is way harder to tackle."_

There was a bit of an awkward pause after Grant kinda let it slip that he put some people down for a dirt nap, but it didn't last painfully long. Like it or not, all of us had a kill count today. Best to leave that conversation for another time.

"_Have you tried fire?" _Allyson asked us. "_Fire helps a lot."_

"_Uhhh," _Grant thought back to her. "_Don't know if Geo-Force is….yup, yup it's fire and lightning. Gaea just confirmed that. It's not natural, but it's actually hotter and more destructive than your average joe's fire."_

"_Besides," _I threw in. "_A single lightning bolt can get hotter than the surface of the sun. If this is about heat, trust me, we're bringing all of it, and it ain't workin'!"_

"_Ok," _Allyson thought back to us. "_What about the actual stone?"_

"_It's in his trident. We can't get it out."_

"_Break it."_

"_Easier said than done."_

"_Geo-Titan, why don't you use your metalbending powers?"_

"_Tried that," _he responded. "_The magic around it, as well as the stone's energy, is disrupting my control over it. Kinda frustrating to be honest."_

"_Well….does he have an arc reactor on his chest?"_

I….I have no words. Insert mental face palm.

"_WHAT?!" _Grant and I mentally screeched at her.

"_Ok, oww, stop yelling, i'm just askin'!_

I admit, while a little annoying, I got what Allyson was getting at. While she was genuinely trying to help, she was also trying to cheer me and Grant up with a bit of sarcastic humor. Not exactly the time for it, but I saw the positive side of that coin. Then again, I was coming off the heels of probably the best night i've ever had with anyone ever, so my judgement may have been a bit skewed. Grant on the other hand, was having absolutely none of her at all.

"_No, Sunbird! No, he does not have….an arc reactor in his chest! Ok, i'm hitting this guy with enough force to break islands, we're blasting him with $#!+ ton after $#!+ ton of lightning and Geo-Force, using constructs out the ass, slashing, punching, kicking, over and over, NOTHING'S WORKING!"_

First, Grant had some serious anger issues to work out (rich coming from me). I hear yoga, soothing music, or kick boxing can help with that. Second, looks like we finally turned that whole jinx thing to our advantage. Because we had that whole multitasking thing down pack, talking with Allyson did nothing to interrupt our epic fight with Attuma; if anything, it just riled Grant up even more. He kept it up with his seismic punches and brutal axe swings, while I managed to squeeze in some Vibration Punches, on top of creating constructs out the wazoo to keep me and Grant from getting multiple schools of shark constructs from tearing away at us (used barbwire nets, and the Sonic Heroes constructs for them). Oh, but all the while still using my Thunder Sword in tandem with Grant's axe and sword to fend off Attuma, who was still killin' it with the dual sword thing. I already used the fireworks threeway analogy, but fighting up close was like fighting in a hurricane. Attuma was slowly getting better at using water, and P.E blasts up close against me and Grant, who were trying our best not to get jostled around. Hell, all those punches and slashes we actually did manage to connect against Attuma, most, if not all of them, were due to us maneuvering the hell out of him, and getting simultaneous strikes to his upper body and leg joints. On one hand, all this P.E. was still doing wonders for me, though I could feel that body gauge getting close to that tipping point. Grant's duel wielding proved to be extremely valuable as well. Like I said, we had to maneuver in order to stay in the game, and while Attuma was formidable, he could only block two weapons at a time; an axe or a sword got through regardless. Also, and this is important, while we were fighting and talking with Allyson, the grinding noise in the sword of Attuma that didn't have the stone in it, was getting higher, more strained. It wasn't until the last second when I finally figured out what was going on, but it was too late to stop it. Grant mentally yelled "_NOTHING'S WORKING!" _and swung his axe at the word in both defense and frustration.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

I knew the sword would snap, but I didn't account for the potential energy stored in it. Once that puppy broke…..boom. I couldn't really give you an accurate description of how extreme it was, other than the fact that when I came to, I was about ten miles over the ground, and my eyes had to heal themselves. The explosion was so powerful I went temporarily blind and deaf. Still, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Aside from getting over the shock of not being dead, I almost felt like a completely new person. All that Poseidon energy had made me way stronger, like, break cars in half stronger. Even though I had only had my Thunder Sense for a short time, I knew what I was feeling now, this mix of water and sonar sensory, wasn't it. Oh it was just as good, better seeing as I was surrounded by nothing but water, but it was gonna take some time getting used to. Thunder Sense in itself was like having 360 perfect sight; this was that times two. Oh, and if we're talking potential energy, my body was hoarding the stuff. I could feel the Poseidon Energy coursing through me down to my very cells, I felt like a volcano about to go Pompeii! God I hoped this wasn't post-Goblin fight all over again, cuz if this stuff was gonna corrode me from the inside out, I doubt even Allyson and the Top 40 Songs of the last decade could save me. Speaking of Allyson, that brought me to the last side effect the P.E. nuke had on me: the buzzing. My head felt like a beehive, radio waves, and speaker feedback were having a brutal cage match in my head; all the Advil and Tylenol in the world couldn't give me relief from the feeling of a marching band going over my brain with spiked boots. I couldn't exactly fine tune the origin of the output, sometimes it felt like my brain was sending out signals, looking for something to latch on too; other times it was the exact opposite, like information I couldn't yet process was getting shoveled into my head. All of that manifested as a buzzing so loud, I couldn't hear Allyson screaming for me in my head until she actually managed to become louder than it. On a side note, she should make an alarm tone and patent it, no way you miss the bus with something that loud next to your head.

"_JASON, ANSWER ME DAMN IT!" _she so subtly nudged. "_DON'T BE DEAD, PLEASE!"_

"_I'm fine, Allyson," _I kinda sorta half truthed to her. "_Just shaking off one hell of a headache."_

"_Oh, thank God," _she instantly calmed down, her voice kinda breaking a bit. "_I heard a boom. Sounded like the end of the world. Felt like the palace was gonna collapse. Grant sounded off, but you-"_

My mind went in a small dash. I searched for Grant and Attuma, putting my new sonar sense to use. I found them about three miles north of where we were previously fighting, and was pleased to feel that my friend was still alive, still kinda kickin' ass. Attuma was taking the slight advantage, what with me not being there to deflect the onslaught of water constructs, but he was tucked away in a full body armor made of his personal metal, while he counter attacked Attuma with his own wave of Geo-Force charged silt storms, and Nature Force charged plant attacks (tree cables, spurs, Bulbasaurs, Charazords, Avengers, you get it). I was actually kinda impressed with his skill and creativity.

"_Oh, that reminds me," _I interrupted Allyson. "_That explosion, it was because we managed to break one of Attuma's swords. I know how we did it, and we can do it again, we just gotta, AGH!'_

My body felt like it was freezing from the inside, like every cell in my body had a pulse. My head felt like acupuncture gone wrong, and the feedback in my head got so loud I couldn't hear myself think, much less Allyson.

"_It is close." _A silky, watery smooth voice almost hummed in my ear like a talking bear. "_Your destiny is at hand Jason Fuller. Prove you are worthy of my gift. Prove you are worthy of my blood. Prove yourself worthy of the sea god, Poseidon."_

And there it was. Hello, voices in my head, I didn't miss you at all! No seriously, what the hell?! Did Olympus have my brain on speed dial? I thought I was just Zeus' descendant, now Poseidon was up in my genes too? How many other immortals owed me birthday, Christmas, and honor roll money?! To his credit, Poseidon didn't stick around long. He just left me with another "go get em', champ" that every Olympian seemed to love in the face of my certain death, and sent me on my merry way. Another bright side, the pain had went from a whopping 11, down to a manageable 4.5/10.

"_Jason!" _I heard Allyson scream into my thoughts again. "_Jesus Christ, Jason, wha-"_

"_I'm fine," _I quickly responded, as I started flying toward Grant and Attuma. "_Just on the verge on getting new, and potentially dangerous powers. Also gods talking in my head. I'm related to Poseidon apparently."_

"_Why are you so calm when you say these things?"_

"_Cuz at this point, after everything we've been through, how can you possibly have a shred of surprise to care anymore?"_

"_Well, you're not wrong. What about this master plan of yours?"_

"_I wouldn't say it's a master plan, but it'll do...hopefully."_

"_Jason."_

"_Storm-Lord, and don't worry, me and Grant will be fine, you do the same."_

"_Ok, good luck."_

"_Ditto."_

I cut off the conversation, poured on the speed, and caught up to the battle within three seconds.

"_Geo-Titan!" _I called to Grant. "_Incoming badass lightning cannon in three, get back!"_

"_Bout time you showed up!" _he thought back to me as he knocked Attuma away. "_What were you doing, napping?"_

I dropped a Zeus Cannon on top of Attuma.

"_Yeah," _I sarcastically responded. "_Best part of the dream was you didn't have a mouth. Now, Delta Tornado, let's make it happen. Oh, and I finally figured out how to take out Attuma's prize possession!"_

"_Same, bro!" _Grant thought back to me as we manifested an F3 level energy tornado around Attuma, taking him for the mother of all spins. "_We gotta keep it up with the high powered slashes. Didn't notice it until after we snapped his other sword, but the lightning/Geo-Force we're putting around our weapons are making them vibrate super fast. Dunno if we'd get the same results with anything else, but our gear is canceling out the stone's energy around the actual weapon just long enough for ours to make contact with the actual surface. I took a peek at the molecular level, and even though it's slow, the stone's making this stuff super durable we're breaking down the stability of the metal. We keep this up, pour on the pressure, we can break the shell and get the actual nut!"_

That actually caught me off guard. Not saying Grant was stupid, but I never would've pegged him for the physics/molecular science type. Then again, I was the descendant of the sky and sea gods, so what do I care?

"_Uhh," _I responded. "_Yeah….that's exactly what I was thinking. No joke. Still, we gotta force him to pop his weapon back to trident form; the hilt of the sword is way to thick to cut through."_

"_I hear ya," _Grant thought to me. "_Drop the tornado, and get behind your shield, I got somethin' special for our boy. After we come back down, Delta Speed Thrasher!"_

Before I had time to ask what it was that Grant had in store for him, he had already dropped his part of the tornado, forcing me to do the same. Now, I was still a good 50 ft above where Attuma was, and even though Grant was 20 ft lower, I could still sense him as if he were right beside me. When Grant said he had something special for Attuma, I was expecting something golden, green, rock, tree, or even that Giant-Man thing he pulled off a while back. I didn't expect Ant-Man! No for real, Grant went from being 6'4, to the size of a matchstick! For a half second, I wondered how he thought he could hurt Attuma in his current state, but then Grant hit Attuma…..and…...sweet freaking Jesus! Ok, first off, his takeoff alone created a shock wave that would've torn apart an entire complex of suburban homes like an F5 tornado through a wall of toilet paper. The actual impact of him crashing into Attuma literally could've wrecked the entirety of Manhattan. On the way down (dude was faster than a sniper bullet), Attuma crashed into the ground so hard, it would've put a mile long crater where a football stadium would've been. As if that wasn't impressive enough, I clocked Grant at two seconds flat. Yeah, all of that shock wave, crater stuff? That was after time caught up with how fast he was going. Grant came down with a Geo-Force charged axe swing to Attuma's back, and I summoned my Thunder Sword as I flew down to help him.

Without his other piece, fighting Attuma was like fighting someone with only one arm. Me and Grant circled him almost effortlessly for ten consecutive seconds, getting in at least 500 slashes and kicks in before Attuma launched us in separate directions with a P.E. charged shock wave.

"_Aerodynamics now!" _I thought to Grant as I launched Attuma 100 ft up with a Zeus Cannon right under him.

Grant rocketed after Attuma, smacked him around with his axe for a few seconds, and backed away as I brought Attuma back to zero with another Zeus Cannon.

"_Back to Delta Speed Thrasher!"_ I thought to him as we converged on Attuma.

For a good five minutes, we kept this up on Attuma, assaulting him with super fast melee, and then mixing it up when he got a bit too antsy for our liking. In that small window of time, we hit blue boy with Hammer Time, Demolition Derby, Delta Barrage, and even managed to put one hell of an Avatar Beatdown on was in a giant The Thing construct, while I was Kratos wielding the Nemean Cestus. On another note, Zeus and the other Olympians must've hated the God of War series. Still, Attuma was one resilient son of a mother, and always managed, through either constructs, or sheer force of power, to bust up our attack and come back swinging. He literally powered out of our Avatar Beat down by constructing octopus tentacles around us, and slamming us together before blowing our constructs apart with a hell of a power blast.

"_This isn't working!" _I thought to Grant as we recovered and assaulted Attuma again. "_We need that trident back out now!"_

"_Don't sweat it, Storm-Lord," _he thought back to me. "_One golden pitchfork comin' up pronto!"_

He broke up our attack pattern (kind of a mix between Delta Speed Thrasher and freestyle), kneed Attuma hard in the gut, grabbed him by his back, and threw him straight up. Before Attuma could come back from that, Grant materialized a catapult construct around him, and sent him flying up and out. Grant flew after him, though not as in a hurry as he probably should've been if he wanted to take Attuma while he was down, and changed his axe to spear mode. Attuma did manage to recover, but only in time to see Grant's spear about to whack him upside his head. With only a millisecond to spare, Attuma blocked the strike with his sword, pushed Grant's spear aside, and made a slash for his chest, willing the blade to extend into trident mode. Grant managed to catch the blade, though he winced a little bit, and kicked Attuma away with a Geo-Force charged front kick.

"_You got two wishes left, dude," _he thought to me. "_No wishing for no wishes, and Aladdin rules apply. Now if you don't mind, let's finish this!"_

As Grant and Attuma had it with their spears and energy blasts, I rejoined the party. I will definitely say that the next two minutes of the fight were a bit awkward for me. Grant and Attuma didn't give each other any ground whatsoever; meaning I couldn't find my footing all that easy. I managed to stick in the background, and disrupt Attuma's attacks with some miniature missiles to his back, and some Phantom Bolts to the side of his head….and that's when it hit me. While Grant was taking the power forward position, I had to keep Attuma off-balance, and go for his trident in the brief few seconds I could squeeze in. For example, while Grant and Attuma had their spears locked, I blasted Attuma's face with my Thunder Vision, told Grant to force their spears to the side, and after summoning and wreathing my sword with lightning, I cut and grinded at the other side of Attuma's trident. Still hated that grinding noise, and I still didn't know how to feel about the P.E. showers (especially now that I knew about my other godly ancestor), but at least we had a game plan now.

Attuma managed to get off a small pulse of water, separating the three of us, but before he could lunge at me, Grant pulled him back with a crane construct, bashed him with a hammer punch to the head, and created a boa constrictor construct around him, leaving only his extended arm, and trident free. Without even glancing at each other, we started cutting at either end of the trident. Grant kept Attuma down for as long as he could, actually making the construct bite and construct harder when Attuma bucked more than occasionally. Even then, Grant only managed to keep him down for 20 seconds (a record), before he warned me to get clear of Attuma's upcoming explosive wave. I got under my Sky Shield while flying back, and even though Attuma came after me again, I blocked his stab, spun around into a backhand shield bash, and while popping out a Thunder Shield on my right arm, hit him in the face with a Vibration Punch, while releasing the equivalent of five Final Flashes. Couldn't tell if it was more of the blast, or the punch, but I really got some good torque on that swing; Grant had to side flip over Attuma and divert his flight pattern with a punching hammer construct.

"_A little warning next time, bro?!" _he thought to me.

"_Sorry," _I responded. "_Discovering new know how it is."_

"_Don't I ever."_

We flew down after Attuma, who was coming back up in a water pillar propulsing him up at like 100 mph.

"_Stonewall him," _I thought to Grant.

Attuma smacked face first into a Geo-Force charged golden wall, which also wrapped him in a cocoon, leaving only his trident hand free. A bit redundant, sure, but why fix ain't broken? Grant and I resumed our sawing positions, but we got even less time to do our thing before Attuma broke out of this one. I get it. If I was wrapped in a bedazzled cocoon while two kids messed with my stuff, i'd be pissed too. When Attuma burst out as that burning blue rage monster, even if it almost made me $#!+ myself, I completely understood. He blasted Grant square in the chest with a column of Poseidon Energy, sending him careening into the distance leaving us with some alone time. Let's see...me, myself, and I against that again? Yeah, how about no? I immediately went into Thunder Form 2, turned into a tesla sphere around Attuma, and after keeping him stuck inside the voltage for a good ten seconds, reconstructed myself as a sea serpent, grabbed him in my jaws, and flew after Grant. No way was I waiting for him to take his sweet time.

"_Geo-Titan!" _I thought to him. "_If you're still conscious, i'm inbound with blue boy! Get your game face on, and nut up for round 12!"_

"_Already way ahead of you, bro!" _he thought to me, and I noticed a burning green fire in the distance.

I released Attuma from my jaws, reshaped myself into a giant tail fin, and volley ball smacked Attuma towards Grant, who caught him square in the back with a flying kick. I changed back to normal, summoned my sword, and had at Attuma again for the thousandth time.

This time, Grant and I managed to keep up a steady pace, that actually didn't require keeping Attuma being constrained our cocooned. We fell back on using that mix between Delta Speed Thrasher and freestyling, but instead of trying to punch Attuma out, focused on purposely attacking his trident. Basically, ignoring the most basic rule of sword/spear fighting aside (never cut at the blade unless defending or deflecting), this worked out reasonably well for us. Again, I used constructs and Phantom Bolts to keep Attuma off-balance, while Grant kept most of blue boy's attention on trying not to getting an axe slammed into his skull over and over. Every spare second we had, we attacked and sawed at the trident, sometimes together, mostly in three second single attacks. Attuma managed to buck his way out of our rhythm a few times, but Grant and I would just get out of fire, use a Delta Play (Air Force, Animal Kingdom, hammer Time, and Delta Vortex, in that order), and get our groove back. It was a grueling five minutes, though it was pretty rewarding for me. Like I said, the P.E. was life for me. Every second I was exposed to it, I felt myself getting stronger and faster, my reflexes always on point, my stamina feeling like it went on forever, (the sinking feeling that this was gonna hurt in some way sooner or later). It was nice to know that my punches were actually contributing to the fight, rather than just being love taps.

"_Almost there, bro!" _Grant thought to me. "_I'm gonna ground him, get him separated from his trident, you finish it off!"_

"_Got it," _I thought to him as I gave Attuma one last Vibration Punch to the face before backing up.

Grant did his whole Ant-Man thing (so unfair), and sent Attuma crashing to the ground in a first class flight highlighted by a crater in the silt big enough to bury a cruise ship. We flew down together, and after growing back to normal size, Grant slammed into Attuma fists first, and began to wail on him ruthlessly. As he pounded away at him, he made vines and cables of tree bark spring out of the ground, constrict Attuma, and carry his trident further and further away from him. Furthermore, the gravity around us intensified to an almost painful degree; had to be at least 10X earth's gravity. I understood completely though, Grant was giving me every moment he could to finish that trident off. I summoned my sword, gave it the lightning works, and made a mad dash to the trident.

I didn't waste time getting set up. I just put a hand on the shaft, locked onto a spot, and started cutting for the home stretch. The trident was definitely on its way out, the high pitched squeal was music to my ears (in an ironic sorta way), and the surge of Poseidon Energy felt as good as ever. It's hard to say how long I cut at the trident, no longer than a minute for sure, but definitely longer than ten. As the Poseidon Energy continued to flood into me ruthlessly, I noticed how the buzzing in my ear turned into a hum, like my brain was starting to make sense of the feedback it was receiving. My cells started to feel like they were over inflated water balloons, but soon reached a point where they just couldn't anymore. No seriously, I reached a point where my body just couldn't take anymore; the energy may as well have been scrubbing my skin for all the good it was doing me. Even worse, Attuma went underwater Hulk again, and while Grant did his best to keep his foothold on the fight, all it took was one hit to ruin everything. I should've stopped right there, should've gotten the hell out of the way, but I was so close, I had to keep going. I put more and more pressure on the trident, I could hear it giving way, I was so f*(#!*% close! Finally, just when Attuma was maybe three feet away from steamrolling me like the U.S.A. basketball team does to Beijing in the Olympics (don't lie, you know what it is), the trident broke with an explosion for the ages! At this point, I felt like I was stuck in Transformers: Age of Explosions (watch, that'll be a thing). As soon as the trident gave way, the built up energy came to the surface so hard, I can say with complete confidence that the explosion would've leveled all of NYC. At such close range, even with my body accepting this stuff, I should've been utterly erased from existence. If it wasn't for the Stone of Poseidon saving my butt, I probably would've. Oh yeah that's right, apparently the stone must've liked me, cuz after it was free of the trident, it flew straight into my mouth!

First, cuz I I know you're probably wondering, it didn't taste like anything at all. FYI, it's hard to taste anything when your taste buds are being seared off. On another interesting note, it seemed like my magical immunity was more than just a skin level thing. Even inside my mouth, I could feel the protection coursing through my insides. only problem was, as i've come to discover, the protection was kinda sorta selective. See, while my aura was protecting me from foreign/harmful magic, as it turned out, because I had a bit of Poseidon in my DNA, this energy wasn't foreign to my body at all. In fact, being near the stone was basically a kickstart, igniting what was already there. Oh, and while I didn't taste anything, my entire existence felt the effects of the stone. All that energy that was built in my cells bursted open like a volcano project gone bad. The energy shot through every inch of my body, simultaneously feeling super cold, and scalding hot. Usually stuff like this is painful, excruciating, mindbogglingly cringe inducing to feel. Not this time! Even though it felt like an ocean of power was exploding inside of me, it was like the best kind of adrenaline boost ever. The release I felt from my cells finally letting the power go, was literally orgasmic. I felt strong, insanely strong; like destroy cities strong. The humming in my head leveled out to the point of me actually being able to understand that I was actually hearing….the thoughts of sea creatures, and even Atlanteans. It was like I had developed some sort of telepathic bond with them, which by the way, you really don't wanna know what sharks think while in a feeding frenzy. More so, I felt changed on an almost fundamental level, like the stone gave me something I couldn't give back. That was all before I came to the realization that I had let my guard down, and let the stone merge with my body! Before I could panic, I felt Poseidon invade my mind again, giving me a wave of calm to bite down my fear.

"_Be at ease, Jason," _he said to me. "_This is your birthright, your reward for being the the descendant of Poseidon!"_

"_Birthday or Christmas money would've been just fine, dude!" _I thought back to him. "_Hell, I need a new phone; that'd be appreciated!"_

"_Desist with your shortsightedness boy! I am allowing myself to be distracted from the defense of Olympus to help you! By the blood of Ouranos, my brother was right about you, so disrespectful!"_

"_Says the guys who ignore my privacy and invade my actual thoughts! Whatever. Look, i'm in the middle of trying not to die, so whatever it is you gotta do, just do it."_

Poseidon gave me a humph, and without warning, flooded my mind with information, while making the bonfire of power radiating around me go even more insane. If not for my newfound information processing skills, this would've been like trying to study for an exam for a class you've never taken (then again, I could probably do that to). As was such, I was able to understand and sort through the info with relative ease. In two seconds, I had an extensive knowledge of what my new powers were, and how to use them. Poseidon even gave me a gift to go with it. The broken pieces of Attuma's sword and trident flashed to my feet, before kinda melting together into a pile of goop worth more than a house. The goop, after getting zapped with some Sea Force (that's what P.E. actually is, more on that later), reformed into another trident that was catered just for me. Unlike Attuma's, this one was slimmer, with more precise trident prongs, and had Atlantean inscriptions etched into the entire length of the shaft. The trident flew into my hand, and the roar around me suddenly died down. Until that point, everything within a 30 ft radius of me was a Super Saiyan rage quit. The trident helped me get a hold on the immeasurable (I was so f*(#!^&amp; lit!) power I had inside my chest. Really, the stone had made its way down my throat, and was inside my chest; a blue sea urchin was plastered across most of my chest armor as proof.

"_Now save my people," _Poseidon told me before he left. "_Show no mercy to these barbarians who would dare to attack Atlantis!"_

Usually i'd have something sarcastic and mean spirited to say, but the fact that the powers of the Greek god of the sea was physically in my chest left me speechless. How did it feel? The second I can actually explain how it feels to be one with the entire ocean, 75% of the earth, i'll let you know. First off, anything and everything that was on or under water, I could sense with 100% accuracy. I could scope out the battle that was happening at the other end of Atlantis' gates as if I was right on top of it, I could feel Allyson kicking all kinds of….whatever it was she was fighting (my senses were telling me she was fighting some kind of living infection of sorts). Hell, I could feel three different cruise ships sailing in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean all at once. My strength was so off the charts too. I knew without a doubt I could lift a battleship like it was a standard 45 pound bar in the gym. If Goblin and Venom were here, I could've taken them on myself with no problem! Now, I wasn't even half afraid of a lightweight like Attuma barreling at me like a confused gorilla. He had no trident, no real power, and spoiler alert, was on his way to taking a dirt nap of his own. I didn't even have to dodge his attack, or try to build a shield around myself, I just turned around, and with barely any effort, stopped a charging attack that would've steamrolled even Grant.

The shock wave around us leveled an entire square mile of rock and stuff (not to mention throwing Grant for another loop), but I held my ground, much to the shock and bewilderment of Attuma. His face….so priceless! He struggled and fought against me, but I had a grip like a python. Hell, the closer he was to me, the more I was taking back the small bit of Sea Force he had in him.

"It was it this moment that Attuma knew," I calmly said (too many Vines, I know). "He f*(#&amp;% up."

I reeled a leg back, created a small pocket of lightning charged swirling water around my foot (i'll explain), and brought it up under Attuma's chin with enough force to use a submarine as a football. As my foot made contact with the underside of his head, I willed the water and lightning around my foot to explode, doubling the impact force, and all but assuring Attuma would never see straight again. He rocketed straight up at the speed of sound, leaving a trail of heated bubbles in his wake. I took off after him in my Thunder Form, willing the water around me to speed me up in a spiral propeller. Once I caught up, I charged my trident with a fork wad of lightning, and whacked Attuma across his chest with the flat of it. Attuma went careening backwards, only to be stopped by a giant octopus tentacle construct made of hard water. I willed the water to swirl around Attuma in a ball of….swirling water, but with lightning striking him from all sides; basically trapping him in a pocket hurricane.

"_Geo-Titan!" _I thought to him. "_Get up here now! I got Attuma right where I want him, we can end this!"_

"_Storm-Lord?!" _he thought back to me. "_You're still alive?! Thank God! Wait! What's up with the stone, where is it?!"_

"_Inside my chest, bro!" _I thought to him. "_As it turns out, I got a bit more god in me than I thought! Dude, I got some sick ass new powers now, you gotta come see!"_

"_On my way!"_

I felt him rocket towards me and Attuma from about 15 miles below. It wouldn't be long until he caught up, so I decided to have some fun with Attuma. I made the swirling water implode on top of Attuma, and let myself flex my abilities out a bit. I started with a barrage of thousands, yes thousands of piranha constructs; each packing enough voltage to total an armored Humvee. With 10,000 of those suckers crashing into Attuma in the span of five seconds, Iet's just say it's a really good thing I was far enough from Atlantis to not level it. I didn't let up on Attuma, I was having too much fun! I slammed him with a barrage of lightning charged sharks, mauled him with giant bear, and lion constructs, and dropped a mix of a Zeus Cannon and giant water spiral blast on top of his head (think i'll call that one the Sky/Sea Slammer). Attuma went barreling down at an almost uncontrollable speed, until Grant intercepted him with an equally powerful (or at least enough) Geo-Force blast to the force of my Sky/Sea Slammer to explode before it hit the ground, barraging Attuma in a storm of lightning, water, and Geo-Force.

"_DUDE!" _Grant thought to me. "_THAT'S LEGIT AS F*(#! HOW YOU FEELING!"_

"_LIKE A MOTHER F*(#!*&amp; GOD, BRO!" _I thought back to him, still high on my new power.

As Grant and I assaulted Attuma together, I cranked the dials up to 100 and broke the knob. I let myself literally become one with the water around me, allowing my molecules to absorb and become the element;basically my Sea Form if you will. Grant and I decked Attuma simultaneously as hard as we could, me actually making my arms expand, charge with lightning, and swirl at like 100 mph. Between the two of us, i'm pretty sure we knocked Attuma into the dirt at Mach 3 minimum! Usually we'd have to fly after him, but with my new waterbending power, I wrapped Attuma in chains and had the water do all the work for us. Grant and I immediately went back to stomping the mess outta him with our fists, hitting him with a total of 2,000 punches, before punting him 50 ft away, and letting the constructs fly. For me, I took that quite literally, losing my body form, and melting into the water.

Ok, now seems like a good a time as any, so i'll try and make this quick. You already get the gist of my deity ambiguous heritage, so you don't have to hear that again. Basically, the connection I had to Poseidon manifested in my cells as latent energy that started to activate due to prolonged exposure to the Sea Force. Oh, right, you probably wanna know what the hell the Sea Force even is. Get ready, this is gonna sound nuts.

When Poseidon became ruler of the seas, to bolster his power, he siphoned off a small part of his life energy, and used magic to make it bond to, and spread through the waters like an infection (I know, eww). The energy merged and bonded not only with the water, but also all the sea life that existed, or previously existed, essentially giving them souls. When Atlanteans and sea creatures are born, they have a small piece of the Sea Force in them, making it their own. When they die, the energy is returned to the Sea Force. Their souls….sometimes merge with the Sea Force, but if you were an exceptional Atlantean or sea animal (now that's a religious guideline i'd read, must be nuts!), you got the V.I.P. Poseidon's Court treatment, basically underwater heaven. As Attuma had been constantly showing me, the Sea Force could be used for battle purposes, but without the stone, was extremely volatile to an improperly attuned body. Also, while it could be used for battle, the Sea Force was the embodiment of purity of the sea. True, the sea can be volatile, unpredictable, and violent, but at its core, it's a somewhat benevolent and life giving entity for both undersea and land life. What i'm getting at here is the fact that the Sea Force is meant to be the best part of Poseidon's power, only to be used for good. When you misuse it, you lose favor with it, hence Attuma's drastic decline in strength. Sure, a lot of that was attributed to the fact that he didn't have the stone in his corner, but even then….the Sea Force didn't like Attuma much at all. That's why Attuma was as desperate to keep his trident as much as he was; he was controlling the Sea Force through conduits, not through his actual body. Now, the Sea Force was eating away at him from the inside out; if anything, Grant and I were doing him a favor by beating the hell outta him. The more we jumped him, the faster the Sea Force was knocked out of his system. If we hurried, if I didn't decide to relieve him of his head, we'd be able to save him. Needless to say, we brought the pain super big time!

Quickly explaining the rest of my powers, it was the standard waterbending, while also being able to shift my molecular structure to absorb and replicate water. Waterbending was definitely a step up in difficulty above airbending; less free, and taking a bit more concentration to pull off (seriously, without the stone this was gonna be some kinda frustrating). Still, it was manageable. While I didn't try them out yet, I had a sweeping suspicion that I could channel the Sea Force, and make sea animals do my bidding. OMG….I was a black Percy Jackson! If I had a face, i'd set a record for the biggest fanboy grin. Speaking of which, Grant and I, after a full minute of uninterrupted water/Geo-Force assaulting, were starting to put the finishing touches on Attuma. For the most part, our attack consisted of a steady stream of whatever constructs came to mind (medieval weapons and sea creatures for me, super heroes and vampire Teletubbies for Grant), relentlessly beating the Sea Force out of Attuma bit by bit. In a little over a minute, any remnant of the Sea Force he had in him was knocked completely out. I immediately took my physical form, hit him hard over the head with a double hammer punch, smashing his stupid helmet while I was at it, and crashed on top of him not even a second after he hit the dirt. Common sense would suggest that I subdue him in some form or fashion, but this guy was going absolutely nowhere. First off, his skin was the equivalent of fleshy charred blue pebbles; the Sea Force destroyed any redeeming good looks he had. He was coughing up blood, and his breath was rattled and shaky. This guy was on his way out, he couldn't fight against a kitten. To be honest, I didn't know what to do now. I had the stone, I beat the bad guy, the battle for Atlantis was already won, there was nothing else to do except…...aw hell! I swear to gods it's always one thing after another!

My sensory abilities were going absolutely nuts about 10 miles off the coast of the opposing wall of Atlantis, and I felt its darkness in the core of my soul. Remember how I said the Sea Force was kinda like an infection? What I was sensing now, was literally that, but in the bad sense. That dark army I was talking about, the one I saw in my dreams, yeah they were almost within spitting distance of Atlantis! Millions upon millions (most likely billions) of dark, mutated, unnatural creatures were roaring, moaning, and wailing their way to the city; the presence of such darkness, especially now that I was prone to sensing it, was almost nauseating. Even though I saw this coming in my dream, I still had next to no idea what the hell I was going up against. Thankfully (without crashing into my head again), Poseidon gave me the cliff notes.

The creatures of the Nethertrench (that's what we were dealing with) were a mix of two things. On one hand, they consisted of unfortunate sea animals, normal or not, and sometimes even humans, that got swept up in one of its breaches; multiversal (cuz that's a thing) rifts that randomly popped up in place as deep as the Mariana Trench, or as shallow as an average fishing lake or swimming pool (apparently it happens). On the other hand, all Atlantean life that were somehow deemed to have lived unworthy lives (seriously, this is a culture class I was dying to take), their souls went here rather than to the actual underworld, though this was kinda a subsidiary of Hades' jurisdiction since Poseidon kinda wanted nothing to do with it. Basically like a sibling that who has a toy he never plays with, so the other brother gets to unofficially have it.

Where did the Nethertrench come from? It started when a power surge from Tartarus made it's way to the sea, killing a fourth of all sea life in the Atlantic about 10,000 years ago. It fed on the fear, pain, and regret of all of the lifeforms it swallowed up; turning their fear, and anger into living demonic forms like that colossal ass Minotaur with the four tentacles coming out of its back. Ever since then the Nethertrench pops up here, there, and everywhere, sucking up what it can before it can't sustain itself any longer. That's the thing about the Nethertrench, Sea Force absolutely kills its dimensional integrity. Like trying to start a fire in a wet and windy environment, the breaches could only stay open for so long before they broke down and fizzled out. It was up to the Atlanteans (if they were near enough to stop it), to make sure whatever came out didn't stay for very long. This time though, things were a lot different. I was really that Llyra chick that was messing up the natural flow of how things were supposed to go. Just like the Sea Force can be accessed by those who are properly attuned to it, the power of the Nethertrench can be used the same way. Don't know why anyone would invite that kinda power inside them, it was the equivalent of injecting yourself with a cancer for both your soul and body that turns everything you are into ethereal sludge, but sometimes bad guys don't seem to think these things through. Anyway, it seemed like the sea witch didn't head for the hills after Sunbird kicked her outta the throne room. Don't know how, don't care how, but Llyra somehow bonded to the Nethertrench….sorta. It would be impossible for one person to actually take hold of something that powerful. If the stone of the Nethertrench ever became a thing, then that would be a different story. No, Llyra had to have let the Nethertrench absorb her completely, while also somehow retaining enough willpower and control to give her some measure of power and control over it; at least that's my theory. So yeah, big bad force of darkness, controlled by an evil sorceress, on its way to destroy an underwater nation. Oh, and thank gods for one second crash courses, cuz I took in all that info quicker than it takes to make minute rice. Still, if this was Attuma's plan, he was gonna call it off right now!

"CALL HER OFF!" I roared at him, smashing my fist into his face for good measure.

I was almost afraid that I hit him to hard. He made a weird gravely/gurgling sound that made me think I gave his face internal bleeding (I think that's a thing). I took a few seconds after jacking him up to realize he was laughing, actually laughing at me! That merited another punch to the face.

"I SAID CALL HER OFF NOW!" I kept up the bad cop act.

Attuma still kept up the laughing, not even remotely giving me an inch of fear for his life.

"You can't frighten me, boy," he barely whispered to me. "I know not what the witch has done, but if I cannot have the throne of Atlantis, its destruction will be a good enough consolation prize.

I summoned my sword, and held it to his throat. Attuma should've been kinda sorta afraid for his life, but he kept laughing harder, despite him coughing up a load of blood.

"WHAT?!" I yelled at him. "YOU THINK I WON'T?!"

"Heh," Attuma barely taunted. "I know you will. I've seen enough battle to know a true warrior when I see one. If I have to die, at least I can go to the Nethertrench with a bit of peace. To know that I was killed by someone after my own heart. Someone like-"

"I'M NOTHING LIKE YOU!

Granted, that doesn't mean much when you kinda sorta shove the tip of a blade into someone's neck. Even worse considering the fact I didn't realize I was doing it until I noticed Attuma winced.

"Nothing like me?" he continued. "Look at yourself, boy. You came all this way under the surface, fought a war for a nation you owe no allegiance to, presumably have killed many more people before battling with me, and have plans to take the sacred Stone of Poseidon from Atlantis by any means necessary. What if Namor refuses to let you take it? Will you steal it from him? Will you fight him for it? Your steadfast grip and unrelenting sword hand says it all. I don't know what this stone means for you, surface dweller, but it is clear you will cut a swath through countless others to keep that stone in your chest. Are we really so different?"

If not checkmate, then definite check. My mind raced through all the probabilities that could've come up, how Namor would take the proposition of me and my team leaving with his city's most prized possession. Granted, there was always the chance that he'd be reasonable and not assume we were a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. flunkies trying to impose their will on a sovereign nation….but….yeah there was no way he could assume anything else. If his temper was anything like i've heard or seen on TV, this was not gonna be easy. Still, I wasn't gonna take it from them….at least I don't think I would've. Still, I don't see why they wouldn't give it to us, we saved their city, Doom would obviously try his hand at getting the stone, and they were in no shape to defend against an attack from him. You know what? Let's just put a pin in it. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

"Come on," Attuma continued. "You can't deny your nature. Finish what you started. Be worthy of the power you now have."

"_Uh, Storm-Lord?" _Grant thought to me while flying over. "_I get that you're having a moral dilemma and what not, but Gaea is screaming in my head about something called a Nethertrench that's gonna wipe out Atlantis. No judging, really, no judging at all, but if you're gonna ice this fool, do it now, cuz we've got bigger, darker, eviler, fish to fry."_

Ironically, the main takeaway I had from this was that Grant knew what the Nethertrench was. Still, he had a point, had to make my decision snappy. Attuma was dying, that much was certain, and considering the plan I had in mind to divert Llyra's attack (super speed thinking for the win!), it would probably be better if I actually went all Red Queen and took his head. Still, with my annoying conscience getting in the way, not to mention the fact that I could sense Krang still alive (though it sucked to be Byrrah), I decided differently. Call me whipped if you wanna (my conscience won't save you from getting knocked into next year), but if Allyson could resist killing Krang, especially after the warpath she was on, I really had no excuse to kill Attuma. I conked him in the forehead with my sword, knocking him out.

"_Come on," _I thought to Grant. "_Let's save Atlantis….again. Oh, and hold this for me, we need him."_

Grant didn't look to comfortable about flying with a limp body in hand, but he shrugged it off, and we were on our way back to the city in no time.

"_So, how much did Gaea tell you about the Nethertrench?" _I asked him as we neared the city entry.

"_Enough," _he thought back to me. "_It's some kinda evil undersea Venom meets Walking Dead afterlife for bad fish people."_

"_How does that even work?"_

"_I know right?! Like, do they have commandments, do they have to accept Poseidon as their lord and savior?"_

"_I would so read whatever their equivalent of the Bible is."_

"_Right? But yeah, big scary demon thing, i've seen it all before. The good news is that whatever blue energy Attuma was packing-"_

"_The Sea Force, basically the exact opposite of the Nethertrench."_

"_Cool. Yeah, that. That disrupts its flow, but that's not the only thing that can disrupt it. Apparently, because it's an incarnation of big bad dark evilness, good and pure energy can give it a good slap upside the head too."_

"_So...your Geo-Force counts."_

"_As long as my intentions are pure and altruistic, yeah."_

"_So wait, then Sunbird-"_

Before, I could even finish that thought, a golden blip flew past about 50 feet under us. Sunbird was some kinda fast when she had to be, cuz if Grant and I didn't mentally yell for her, she wouldn't even know we were behind her.

"_Guys?!" _she thought to us, looking around frantically. "_Where are you?!'_

"_Look up, Sunbird!" _Grant thought to her.

She eventually found us (how do you miss a blob of voltage in the water?), and flew up, presumably to give us a hug….until she realized what Grant was holding.

"Is that, Attuma?!" she kinda freaked out. "Jesus Christ, is he-"

"Not dead," I interrupted her. "But dying."

She kinda calmed down after that.

"Okaaaay," she said, taking a deep breath. "I guess that's better, but where's the-

I put my hand out, created a mini whirlpool over it, and charged it with some Sea Force. I then pointed to my glowing chest, hoping she'd get it.

"Okaaaay," she said again. "That's cool too, i'm fine with that."

She was in shock. Both from my new powers, Attuma's beaten body, and whatever happened during her battle. Still, I was glad to see she was coping pretty well for the moment. Not to be inconsiderate, but we had another job to do.

"So," I continued. "I take it you know about the ooky spooky dark stuff making its way to the city wall?"

"Yeah," she responded. "Llyra channeled the same type of energy back in the throne room before bolting. They don't respond well to my powers though."

"Same for Geo-Force and Storm-Lord's new Sea Force power," Grant said.

"Sea Force?" Allyson asked me.

"Didn't name it, don't care to change it," I waved the question. "Point is, Llyra can somehow control the Nethertrench's power without dying and stuff. I can sense her getting closer. She's controlling an onslaught as wide as the entire wall, plus she has some weird Minotaur/Octopus giant as her mascot."

"How do we beat that? Even if we can hurt her-uh, it….whatever, we can't stop an attack like that."

"Oh, please!" Grant almost shouted (I felt corny inspiration coming on). "Sunbird, the three of us turned the tide of a war! We led this armor better than Namor did. Plus if I had a dollar for every time we fought against something impossible, i'd have….like seven dollars! Point is we're strong, powerful, damn near unbeatable, and that's when we're separated! Together, I don't care if we have to face the Devil himself, we're gonna win always!"

BLAAAAAARRRGH! Ugh, sorry, too much cheese and corn.

"Yeah," I spoke up. "Whatever, GT. Anyway, you and Sunbird both have points. We can hurt Llyra, but i'm betting she's packing way more than what we're bargaining for. We might not be able to beat her, but if we show her we mean business, psyche her out, she'll retreat."

"So, shock and awe?" Allyson asked me.

"Exactly! Geo-Titan, can you spread your powers that thin?"

"Oh yeah," he responded. "Total piece of cake!"

"Cool," I responded. "Sunbird, what about you?"

"If we were above…..maybe," she responded. "I've never tired controlling that much energy. Still, without a lot of natural light to help me, i'll have to draw on my own reserves. I won't be able to do anything too massive, but I can still whip up somethin' fierceish."

"That's fine," I said. "I can control pretty much the entire ocean anyway. I'll do something along the lines of a massive Sea Force charged maelstrom, that oughta take some of the wind out of her approach."

"Well that's all fine and dandy," Grant said. "But why do I have to lug big blue's unconscious ass around?"

"Yeah, seriously, what's up with that?" Allyson asked me.

"Any of you ever play Ryse: Son of Rome?" I asked them.

"No," they both said.

"Oh, well long story short, you halt a barbarian invasion by slicing off the leader's head, and putting it up for them to see. Granted, this isn't just a head, but if Geo-Titan's growing powers can work on other people too, it'll do."

"Uhhhh," Grant went for a good half sec (we naturally drifted into talking at super speed) "Yeah, yeah, I can make that work, no problem."

"You sure?"

"Almost entirely."

"Alright, then let's do this!"

"Wait!" Allyson said. "Just one more thing.

She put her hand on Attuma's head, sung a few bars from Breakaway, by Kelly Clarkson, and after the glow died down, Attuma was less dead looking.

"Had to," she said. "He's not well enough to regain consciousness, but at least he'll live."

"That's cool too," I said (why did he have to be so sweet?). "Again, let's do this!"

"Don't you mean WE GOT THIS!" Allyson teased me as we flew towards the battle.

"_You got somethin' better?!" _I thought to her (hard to talk when flying at Mach 5).

"_I could fill a book with better battle cries!"_

"_Same!" _Grant thought to us.

"_I hate you both." _I retorted.

"_That's not what you said last night," _Allyson thought to me."

Considering how Grant didn't lose his $#!+, I assume the message was for my mind only. Still, that didn't stop me from feeling like I had swallowed a boulder. Allyson laughed at me, probably sensing how much she had just grabbed me by the hair and pulled. I basically stayed silent until we reached the other side of the city.

The good news was that Oroco had made the right decision, and ordered his troops into full retreat back into the city. The turrets were still blasting away like crazy, though it was the equivalent of throwing rocks at a charging elephant. Speaking of which, man oh man was this gonna give me all the nightmares forever! It was still a good ten miles out and closing, but the sight of the Nethertrench coming at me wasn't something I could just shrug off. The dark, somehow solid, liquid, and gas onslaught was even more terrifying up close. Before I had gotten the stone in me, the cries seemed like just that, incoherent wailing. Now, I heard the voices, of billions of Atlanteans, humans, and sea creatures experiencing years of hate, pain, and regret all at once. The shuffling of monster parts was like an amalgamation of every H.P. Lovecraft/Stephen King book ever and then some. Oh, and if Llyra was somehow supposed to be overwhelmed by the power, she was clearly not. She was very much whelmed. Basically, for those of you that have played God of War III (seriously, the gods must hate that series), imagine the fight with Poseidon, but fighting a 3,000 ft tall woman from the torso up made of shadows, with snake hair, black holes for eyes, and fangs that would put Godzilla to shame. From below the torso….well, take your pick of whatever monster head, claw, paw, tentacle, etc., coming out of a dark billowing storm of evil spreading across 3,206 miles (Atlantis put China's wall to shame).

"STORM-LORD!" Oroco yelled as he swam over to clap me on my shoulder. "INDEED, THIS IS A GRAVE DAY FOR ATLANTIS! THE VILE NETHERTRENCH HAS AMASSED AGAINST OUR GATES WITH THE FURY OF A TITAN! WE CANNOT HOPE TO-"

"SHUT UP, SHAKESPEARE!" I yelled at him. "ME AND MY TEAM GOT THIS ON LOCK! STEP BACK AND ENJOY THE SHOW!"

Oroco let go of me, muttering about how he wasn't Shakespeare, and I summoned my new trident. Much like the way my battle gear worked, whenever I wanted the trident to materialize in hands, it did. Where did it go when I wasn't using it? Basically, imagine the Sea Force was kinda like a locker that housed it when I wasn't using it. All I had to do was tap into it, call for my trident, and shazam! When I summoned the trident, the water around me swirled a bit, and small energy bolts, like residual static surged around the trident. Kinda cool, yeah, but i've been in the game long enough to be disillusioned already (I get used to stuff quick); not Oroco though. He looked at me like I was his hero, like I was the most badass, most f*(#!%&amp; awesome thing he'd ever seen.

"And on that day," he whispered, though something was off about his voice. "He, with the golden trident, adorned with the blessings of Poseidon, will defend us in our darkest hour. And he will ride with the strength of the earth, and the fury of the Sun. The song of angels will be his sword, the souls of the righteous, his sword. PRAISE POSEIDON!"

…...…..I have no idea. I truly have no idea in the name of God what he was talking about. The only thing I really took notice of, was the fact that I realized he was speaking Atlantean, and I completely understood him, almost like it was second nature.

"_Sunbird, GT!" _I thought to them. "_Ya'll ready?!"_

"_Good to go, Storm-Lord!" _Grant thought back to me.

"_Ditto," _Allyson chimed in. "_Let's do this!"_

"_Alright, Delta Force!" _I hyped myself up. "_Release the beast, give her hell!"_

A flash of green, wide enough to cast a net over God knows how long, ripped across the Nethertrench like a jagged scar. Llyra/the entire Nethertrench, screamed in agony, and not the normal kind. This was a scream of outside agony, of a pure force giving Llyra a kick to the face. Grant followed that up with what can only be described as Thor with green lightning/fire. I heard Grant roar like a bear, followed by hundred of BOOMS rippling across the ocean. Geo-Force bolt, hundreds, upon hundreds of em' rained down from 10,000 ft above Llyra, striking her everywhere. Balls of Geo-Force, big enough to use skyscrapers as bowling pins, lobbed into into the Nethertrench like Deep Impact on steroids. As if that wasn't enough, dude summoned every last f*(#!^&amp; superhero he could think of, made Geo-Force constructs the size of skyscrapers, and rained them into the Nethertrench with a fury like you wouldn't believe. Llyra would have to get used to Avengers, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, New Warriors, and dozens of other heroes crashing into her repeatedly. Granted, it was like throwing sticks at an elephant (if you wanna compare sizes), but those sticks had an explosion worth a fleet of battle jets. Allyson was the second one to get in the game, and she did not disappoint whatsoever. She flew a good 30,000 feet over the city, and was amassing as much energy as she could around herself, cozying up in the mother of all not so mini-suns. After a few seconds, she came out of the gates swinging hard; super hard.

First off, she made her sun supernova, lightning up the water, and reconstructed it into a giant phoenix looking bird. The wingspan wasn't enough to spread across the full 3,206 miles, but it was enough to cover a good 100 or so (i've never seen such a huge amount of fire in my life). Besides, even if she couldn't hit everywhere at once, she did a great job of spreading her power as thin as she could. Just like Grant, golden balls big enough to decimate skyscrapers, rained down from on high. Bolts of Sun Energy struck the Nethertrench sparingly, but effective enough. Also, because Grant's attack plan was the ideal standard at this point, Allyson threw in her own construct army too. Instead of super heroes though, Allyson went all angelic on Llyra's business. In unison with the fire from heaven, hundreds upon hundreds of angel constructs, around the same size as Grant's superhero constructs, charged down from above to kamikaze the $#!+ outta Llyra. They ranged from muscular guys and gals in medieval armor, to monk looking holy people with wings. Hell, a good chunk of them had up to 4-6 wings at a time. Still, as if this wasn't next level enough, all of the fireworks she was putting on paled in comparison to her main event. Remember the whole giant phoenix made of golden fire? Allyson was willing the construct to flap its wings over and over again, throwing wave after wave of fire (warming up the atmosphere almost back to positive digits) into the darkness. Allyson also kept up the habit of singing while doing her whole wrath of the sun bit; her voice resonating across the area like a fully amped up stereo system and then some. Of the time we spent holding Llyra back, she blew through, Breakaway, Dare You, and Giant Woman (yes from Steven Universe, she even added her own lyrics to pad the run time). Don't know how she did it, but her voice amplified the impact of the flames, like he was willing the good and pureness she so clearly had inside her into the flames. Between her and Grant, Llyra was getting the ass kicking of a lifetime. Now it was my turn to contribute.

I closed my eyes, and focused on the the length and width of Llyra's Nethertrench assault. As good of a job as Grant and Allyson were doing, they were only scratching the surface of the real meat of Llyra's assault. In actuality, the onslaught spread back a far as 2,000 miles, after that….I couldn't sense anything but pure darkness. No time to think about that, had to focus on the part of the problem I could actually control. I focused on the length and width of Llyra's further assault force, and spun my trident over my head. To put this in perspective, imagine putting your hand in a tub of water, and swirling it around, making a cute little whirlpool. I was doing the exact same thing, with the exact same ease, only on a scale big enough to cover the bulk of Llyra's attack. If we were anywhere near the surface, you'd freak out at the sight of a swirling body of water, big enough to decimate the east coast. Once I got the bulk of the attack on its starting legs, I tapped into the Sea Force to give it a bite. Accessing the Sea Force was strange to say the least. Like I said, the energy is just a bilayer of the ocean, almost one and the same if not for the dimensional separation. To access it was not to harness and beat it into submission, rather than let the energy flow through you, and bring it to the physical plane, where you could manipulate it however you saw fit. The power spike I felt in my entire being was massive, like someone nuked my insides. It took a few seconds to make it work, but I was finally able merge the dimensions, and make Llyra really feel the sting. From where I was standing, it was like watching the neon filled sea crashing in on itself for seemingly ever with no restrain. I started simple at first, just a waves and splashes crashing into the darkness. As I got used to the feeling of wielding the Sea Force, I got more bold in my attack formations. First with Sea Force charged fists, medieval weapons, sea predators (and lions), and mythological beasts to tear into the Nethertrench from all sides; large enough to decimate cities. As the minute passed, it was just a matter of me spreading my attack further and further, adding more and more layers to the onslaught. As I made the sea crash and thrash into Llyra, I joined the trend my teammates set, and summoned bolts and balls (snigger) from above. The difference was how much range I was getting in every sense of the word. While Grant and Allyson were more or less taking care of the front of Llyra's attack, I was doing the heavy lifting in the way back. Also, I was charging the giant lobs of water balls with Sea Force, and lightning; ditto for the bolts raining down on the darkness. I'm telling you, Storm and Thor would've been drinking so much Haterade right now! With my extension of control and sensory of the sea, came with an extended Thunder Sense and control the Power Grid. True, most of this was gonna get dialed back after I let this stone out of my body, not to mention the soreness that was probably gonna come with it, but for now, I was enjoying controlling a water/lightning storm that could destroy continents. Zeus and Poseidon must've been so proud of me!

Don't feel bad for Llyra though. While me and my team were owning the f*(# outta her, she put up a kinda sorta fight. For starters, she was able to shift her form towards the center of the oncoming Nethertrench (taking at least 100 lightning/Sea Force bolts to the the top of the head), and use the extra space in the front to form a tidal wave of sorts….you know, just made up of evil multiversal darkness. Grant poured on the defense, raising a barrier of Geo-Force that spanned across the city perimeter. Not to knock his effort, but I could tell that wouldn't be able to hold. Still, on impact, his Geo-Force wall would take a significant bite out of the wave; I could take advantage of that. I willed the water just behind Grant's wall to rise up, and ignite with all the Sea Force (well...more like 20%). Keep in mind, the wall was about 1,000 ft tall, and 3,206 miles long. The wave Llyra was sending at the wall was at least twice the width, though thankfully not as wide. I easily made a wave that trounced the size of Llyra's dust cloud, and shaped them into a phalanx of Roman shields. It maybe took like 2% of my attention and effort to pull off (I was gonna miss this rock), and once Grant's shield was down, my great wall of Jason stood tall. No time to revel in my awesomeness through. I broke the shield wall down, turning it back into a fluid wave again, and made it slam forward, pushing back Llyra's would be finishing move against Atlantis. As the abundance of Sea Force shoved into her and the Nethertrench, the wails of pain grew louder and louder. By the way, there aren't exactly English words to describe what he was yelling, but i'm pretty sure Llyra was yelling some really nasty things at me in Atlantean. Again, Llyra tried her damnedest to actually show up in this fight. She tried using the Nethertrench to lob balls of dark energy at us catapult style (not as ineffective as you'd think, given the distance she had to work with), giant sea monster constructs, even tired lashing out with giant barbed tentacles as far as the eye could see (and then some). Still, my defense was all kinds of strong. Every tentacle got sliced in half before it could get within spitting distance of the city. My lightning and Sea Force bolts striking her constructs and energy balls down before they could even gain any traction. With her offense getting squat, all she had to look forward to was eating the attacks me and my team kept throwing at her (also the thousands of turrets still opening fire on her, they deserve some credit too). Grant kept pouring on the Geo-Force bolts, balls, and constructs, managing to spread his power thin enough to keep Llyra busy. Again, Allyson wasn't quite on par with what me and him were doing, but 200/3,206 miles raining with the golden fire of angels is nothing to sneeze at. Still, for all our huffin' and puffin', we weren't exactly doing anything significant. Oh, we were holding her off for sure, but that's all we were doing. Personally, I could go all day. Grant seemed to be the same, and if Allyson was ever gonna run outta Sun Energy, she didn't show it. Still, we couldn't keep this stalemate up forever, eventually one of us would have to give, and unless we put the brakes on Llyra now, I was afraid we were gonna give way before she did. We had to shock and awe better. Only problem, I didn't have a better plan. Thank God Grant did.

"_Yo guys!" _he thought to me and Allyson. "_This is doin' wonders for my cardio, but I think it's past time we send miss black witch packing!"_

"_Trust me when I tell you, dude," _I thought back to him. "_I'm all ears if you've got a plan to make that work!"_

Two seconds later, I picked up a huge blob of something forming over the city. The blob eventually took the form of….Thor's hammer. Ok, Grant created a giant hammer, about the size of a battleship out of his on call liquid metal thing…..i'm willing to see where this was going.

In a "blink and you miss it" moment, the hammer blazed to life with Geo-Force, enough to set fire to an entire city, in maybe half a second. The flames/voltage completely overshadowed the hammer, but Grant was just getting started. After another surge of some Nature Force, Grant started to wrap his blazing hammer in vines and tree bark. While that was going on, he willed the silt to rise from the ground, enough to cover the hammer (had to be at least 200,000 tons worth), and upon covering the hammer, hardened it into stone, which he then transmuted into granite.

"_Ok, guys," _he thought to men and Allyson. "_Add your energy, as much as you can into it. Fire, lightning, Sea Force, whatever, enough to make this hurt!"_

"_What exactly are you getting at, Geo-Titan?!" _Allyson asked him.

"_Long story short, we're gonna shock and awe from the inside out! More on this later, but I can cut atoms in half with subatomic Geo-Force! I'm gonna cut a swath through Llyra and her army of Dementors! You and Storm-Lord feel free to do the same if you can!"_

"_Hold up!" _I thought to him. "_You gonna release God knows how many NUCLEAR BOMBS barely 10 miles away from where we are?!_

"_Hydrogen actually," he casually responded. "Place is loaded with the stuff. Don't worry, I can use G-Force to keep it contained. Besides, the blasts have to cut between all the black gooey energy stuff, we'll be fine!"_

"_I'm gonna at least but up a barrier around her, also a shield around the city for good measure!."_

"_You sure you can do that, Storm-Lord?" _Allyson asked me.

"_No doubt," _I responded. "_I've got the power, all I gotta do is tap into it. Let's take a vote, all in favor of going all Hiroshima on Llyra?"_

We unanimously voted aye.

"_Oh, by the way, Geo-Titan," _I thought to him. "_Hydrogen bombs are caused by fusion, not fission."_

"_I can do that too," _he quickly responded.

For me, contributing power to the hammer was easy. I tapped into the Power Grid, ignited the atoms around the hammer, and made the power grow until I had overshadowed the hammer in a city's worth of power. I added twice as much Sea Force to the mix. I may have set the bar a little too high, cuz Allyson had to drop her portion of the attack, expand her phoenix construct by about an extra fifty miles, and after a few more bars of 22 by Taylor Swift, added her power into the mix. While not overshadowing my power, she definitely contributed equal to it.

"_Good to go, Geo-Titan!" _she thought to Grant. "_Let's do this!"_

"_Alright, here's hoping we don't vaporize ourselves!"_

Yeah, that was so not happening. As Grant willed the glowing hammer of the gods to fly into the heart of the Nethertrench (thing had to be moving at like 500 mph), I raised a Sea Force Barrier over the entire city. Did I mention Atlantis is as big as Australia? While that was going on, I raised a curving dome around Llyra, once the hammer had made it within range. I kept the dome rising and extending. I couldn't completely cover her from front to back, but I could make sure my shield covered the fallout. By the time I was done, a Sea Force charged dome of water spanned the entire limit of the Nethertrench (3,206 miles exactly), as well as 50,000 meters upward. Why all the fuss? Look up the potential explosion rate for the Tsar Bomba, then you'll get it. Anyway, once the hammer hit (through Llyra tried in vain to block it, the initial explosion was nothing big to worry about, just the force of may be two or three atomic bombs going off at once. After that, Grant, Allyson, and I opened the mother f*(#!^&amp; floodgates! I latched on to the voltage and Sea Force within the heart of Llyra's assault, and made them spread out as far and as violent as I could make them hit. The voltage didn't get too far, only about 200 miles or so, but the Sea Force...that was how I made my name. I made made the power expand to either side of Llyra's Nethertrench assault bringing in the water to to pile on the several billion metric tons of power. Grant on the other hand, upped the ante by several hundred megatons via at least 50 hydrogen bombs going off in a domino effect across the Nethertrench. True to his word, the expanse of Geo-Force, as well as the huge swath of dark energy to cut though, kept the bombs under control. Granted, Allyson unintentionally made things a bit worse. See, the thing about atomic-like bombs is that they need an incredible source of energy to set off the chain reaction that causes the actual explosion. Allyson, who was visibly and audibly straining herself, making the Sun Energy expand into volatile golden flames like a brush fire that could engulf states, was providing that energy and more. In the end, it was no harm no foul. The wall I built to contain the explosion held up beautifully, though the force waves that bombarded the barrier I had over the city, not to mention the sound of the explosions going off, was enough to make me feel like I was getting jostled around in a train accident. Hell, once Allyson and Grant had done their bit (the overall bombardment lasted a good minute or so), I put on the finishing touches. The feeling of controlling so much power was intoxicating, going to my head like an adrenaline rush. I used the old tactic of converting my defensive wall into an offensive wave, sending it on a crusade against the wounded Nethertrench energy. The wails and curses I heard were proof enough that Llyra was on the ropes, but I kept going. I converted the shield I put up around Atlantis, combined it with a large amount of water, to create a trident big enough to vertically divide Texas in half. I willed the trident to fly into Llyra, creating another huge explosion, and then set up my final play.

"_Geo-Titan!" _I thought to Grant. "_Do the growing thing, now!"_

While he did that, I flew over the city limits, about three miles out, and started creating the godfather of all combat avatars. It wasn't really original, but for what I was going for, it would have to do. I shifted into my sea form and started collecting as much water as I could; making it swirl in a gigantic ball, before giving it structure. I took my inspiration from the Poseidon boss battle from GOW III. I created a torso made completely of water, using the Sea Force to replicate the glowing tattoos. I made sure to pay special attention to making my dreads authentic. From the waist down, I was a giant mesh of thrashing water horses (the heads). Coming out of my back, I had four tentacles, each as long as a mountain, coming out of my back. Each tentacle that three prongs in it, and was glowing with Sea Force (Dr. Octopus who?). All in all, I was 3,000 feet tall, at least a million tons of water, and was even holding my golden trident, which somehow grew with me. I kept the grandstanding going, raising a wave of water twice as tall as me, long enough to completely cover Atlantis' borders. While charging it with Sea Force, I went absolutely nuts with with the constructs. Every square inch of the wave had a water construct coming out of it. I went basic on a good bit, having merpeople with tridents form on the very top of the wave. Closer to the middle, I had a mesh of cavalry knights on the backs of sharks (couldn't do horses twice). Near the bottom was my collection of god figures i've either seen in movies, read about, or played in video games. Multiple interpretations from the criminally underrated Clash of the Titans (the 2010 one, can't believe it has a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes) movie, Percy Jackson series, God of War Games, Triton from The Little Mermaid, both versions of King Neptune from Spongebob, even some drawings of the gods I liked on deviantART. Long story short, I was ready to go, I dared a bitch to come at me!

"_Storm-Lord?" _Grant asked me. "_Not to step on your badass moment, but Attuma's all big and stuff so…"_

"_Thanks," _I thought to him. "_I'll take him off your hands."_

I willed my wall of something cool to part and sent one of my tentacles to reach back, grab Attuma, and bring him forward to the limelight. At this point, the dust had cleared, and Llyra was visible. She was still holding on, but barely. Her form was shifting between instability, and the rest of the Nethertrench was starting to get more violent, less controlled. That's part of the reason why I didn't just release the fury of the sea on her sorry butt; without her controlling it, i'd most likely have to deal with raw, savage, untamed Nethertrench. Still, she could see me, and I presumed she could take a hint. I grabbed Attuma's unconscious body, now half my height, raised him up like a championship belt, and made the constructs in my giant wave get riled up like they were at a football game.

"RETREAT NOW!" I roared at her.

Her face told me that she'd like nothing more than to tell me to f*(# off, while continuing her assault with a vengeance. Still, she looked at the power I was packing, and after a few seconds standoff, made the smart decision. She and her hair hissed at me, then retreated back to wherever. It concerned me that the Nethertrench wasn't fading away like I think it's supposed to (like I know where a multiversal evil entity goes on its downtime), but I decided to count my blessings, and dismantle my construct wall. I shifted back to my body, and flew back to the wall to find a cheering army waiting for me. Seriously, it was like I won the freaking Super Bowl for them! Every Atlantean soldier who was within reach came to clap me on the shoulders, calling me "Poseidon's Trident" or, and there's no word that translates exactly for this, the closest thing would be "He that is one with, and commands the power of the sea". I wasn't the only one getting the MVP treatment. Grant and Allyson were getting swarmed by adoring fans, Atlanteans who'd kill just to touch the shoulders of the heroes who saved their city.

"_Now this is more like it!" _I thought to my friends, allowing myself to enjoy the attention.

"_What's that, Storm-Lord?" _Allyson asked me. "_I thought you didn't like being a hero?"_

Before I could tell her off, the crowd gradually started getting, silent. More so, the soldiers started clearing out, like they had just realized I had a flesh eating virus or something. To be honest, I might've actually preferred the flesh eating virus over what I ended up getting. After the last soldier cleared, I found myself face to face with elf boy himself. Namor, King of Atlantis.

Up close, the guy didn't look all that tough. For starters, his armor was all rough looking now. A few scrapes and gashes were prominent in his abdomen area, he was missing one of his shoulder guards, and most of the chain mail that was supposed to be around his biceps and his hair was all messed up. The guy was 6'2 (around the same as me), and even though he had that regal presence to him, he was scoring no intimidation points with me. We kinda sized each other up, him glancing at my trident, face, and of course the glowing sea urchin glyph plastered on my chest. I didn't know whether or not he was gonna thank me with a medieval friendship grip, or try to have me and my friends killed. He gave me his answer posthaste.

"Soldiers of Atlantis!" he roared in Atlantean (probably thinking I didn't understand him).

Hundreds of soldiers, as well as the few thousand more swimming behind Namor, came to attention.

"Surround the surface dwellers, defense position alpha!" he continued.

Grant and Allyson got the rugs swept out from under them when their entourage of adoring fans suddenly surrounded them with tridents pointing barely a foot away from their necks. I was spared the same treatment only because Namor was too close to me.

"Now then, boy," he said casually to me, getting up in my face. "Drop your weapon, and relinquish the stone back into my custody."

"Or else?" I spat out, fighting my instinct to deck him.

"Or else? Let us see…..how about, or else you and your companions die right here and now?"


	20. Ch: 20:Namor Hates Us, Well Mostly Me

**Chapter 20: Namor Hates Us...Well, Mostly Me**

I hate people. No, seriously, Namor just ruined it for everyone; I hate people. If it were up to me, i'd take my friends, my mom, go to some other dimension, and let the rest of humanity get stuffed. Ok, clearly I wouldn't do that, but it doesn't excuse the fact that Namor was the undisputed king of being a dick. I mean, me and my friends go out of our way, under the sea for crying out loud, to help him clean up his mess. We save his life and his kingdom from getting wasted, and this is what we get? I'm not askin' for a victory feast (although I was kinda hungry), but a goddamn thank you seems a bit appropriate, right? Also, king or not, nobody gets in my face like this, period.

"_Guys?" _I quickly thought to Grant and Allyson.

"_We're fine, bro," _Grant thought back to me. "_Not even on their best day could these guys touch us!"_

"_Doesn't mean we need to fight!" _Allyson quickly spoke up. "_Think of it from his perspective. He clearly doesn't jive well with S.H.I.E.L.D., and we look like law enforcement here to take what belongs to them."_

"_But that's not why we're here!" _I thought back to her, getting a bit agitated. "_We came out of way to save him! Why doesn't he get that, is he bent in the head?!"_

"_Just try to calm the situation, Storm-Lord. Make him understand that we mean him no harm. You can start by doing as he says; give them the stone back."_

"_So I should just roll over for him?"_

"_It's not rolling over, it's showing a sign of good faith."_

"_Sounds a lot like rolling over," _Grant thought to us.

"_Shut up, GT," _Allyson thought back. "_We all know you want his autograph anyway."_

"_You say that like it's a bad thing."_

Allyson rolled her eyes and looked back at me. Yeah, while Namor was busy puffing his chest, me and my team had a full conversation in about a half second. I didn't like the thought of bending to this asshat, but if it meant not having to hurt any of the Atlanteans (they couldn't do squat to us), i'd roll with it. I shifted out of Speed Mode, and without breaking eye contact with Namor, took a stab at trying to get the stone out of me. I didn't exactly know what I was doing, but I started by putting a hand on my chest, and willing the stone to eject from it, and into my palm. Bolts of Sea Force discharge surged around my body violently, and it felt like I was ripping my heart out!. By the time it was over with, I was on my knees gasping and shaking violently, like a chihuahua. Without the stone in my chest, I felt my power drop like an anvil in free fall. At best, my Sea Sense (official) was good enough to cover about seven miles; ditto for my Thunder Sense. I could still sense my connection to the Sea Force, albeit microscopic compared to what it used to be. Also my waterbending was still a thing, but at best I could probably control enough water inside an Olympic-size swimming pool.

"I will take that," Namor said to me, reaching out his hand for the stone.

I handed it up at him, and tried to get up. Oh yeah, it was gonna take my body a little bit to adjust for the lack of strength.

"Don't get up," Namor talked down to me. "It is fitting that you bow to a king. In fact, you two, companions of this boy, on your knees as well."

Amazing how much pain you can ignore when you're pissed the f*(# off. I willed the water to swirl around me, and help me back to my feet. I looked Namor dead in his eyes again, my fists clenched for a fight. Namor smirked, like I was a puppy that did a cute trick for him. He clenched his right hand, and punched me hard in the gut. On a good day, my Speed Sense wouldn't let him get close enough to make impact, but this was a special case. My Speed Sense did go off, but my body was still adjusting from the power withdrawal. Namor's punch came at me at the speed of a fly in molasses, but I couldn't move out of the way. Hell, he had the stone locked away in his own trident, so the stone wasn't bolstering his strength (though I did notice he had glowing blue tattoos all over his face and exposed parts of his body). Still, the impact of his fist slamming into my gut was like a rhino had trucked into it. I keeled over, clutching my stomach, wheezing, and gasping for breath. I heard Grant shouting a slew of cuss words at Namor, sensed him barreling through dozens of Atlantean soldiers to get to him. Allyson kept putting up barrier after barrier to slow him down, shouting words of peace to both him and Namor. Yeah, peace was the last thing on my mind right now.

While I was bent over clutching my stomach, I made my insides vibrate for a good while, forcing my powers to balance themselves out. While my body was going through a heavy case of withdrawal, a lot of the imbalance was just my cells still trying to balance out my new set of powers with the old ones. Again, I wasn't as powerful without the stone, but it left me with one hell of a parting gift. I still had my waterbending powers, access to Sea Force, and above all else, enhanced strength and durability. I without a doubt knew that at least 60% of it was simply because of being underwater, but I felt like I could bench press a good 50 tons, so I must've had one hell of a swing. Still, as I got up, I forced myself to make one last effort for peace. I owed my friends and the Atlanteans at least that much. I summoned my trident, and banged the shaft on the ground, creating a small ripple of water through the area. It was a kinda sorta show of power (yeah right), but it was mostly just to get everyone's attention. Lucky me, it worked.

Again, every Atlantean that wasn't Namor, looked at me like I was Jesus. Oroco was damn near busting the seams. Hell, elf boy himself looked at my trident with a mix of curiosity and disgust. Odds were he knew what this meant, and it was making him look bad in front of his crew.

"Alright," I said through gritted teeth. Let's try this again, your highness. I'm Storm-Lord-"

"No," he interrupted me. "When you were birthed, your mother did not name you that. Real names only, or your words will fall on deaf ears."

Ok. He was getting dangerously close to the whole dead parents zone, but I could skirt around that.

"Pretty sure that's counter productive to the whole secret identity thing," I responded.

"Don't flatter yourself, boy" he clapped back. "I have enough responsibility and benign things to do than waste time and energy hunting for children surface dwellers. Besides, you are not superheroes. By the looks of it, you're S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. I don't like S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. So start again with real names, least you forfeit what goodwill you have."

"You'd think saving your kingdom, and your ass would actually build up a lotta good will. Whatever tho. Name's Jason Fuller. My friends are Grant Jackson, and Allyson Grace. Also, we're more like temporary interns; Fury kinda sorta kidnapped us for this team."

"_That's an over exaggeration,_" Allyson thought to me at super speed. "_Agent Hill was very kind and respectful to me and my parents."_

"_Did she come with a gun squad?"_ I asked her.

"_No."_

"_Coulson came with a lie detector bracelet, two guards, and a gun squad set up around my house, all of which was after my mom fed him and his two Men in Black goons."_

"_Well….you did almost kill a guy."_

"_Am I ever gonna live that down?"_

"_Maybe in about five years," _Grant chimed in. "_Don't worry Storm-Lord, I got the gun squad, and got brought in by an Inhuman. Called herself Quake. She was hot."_

"_Then deal with that in your own way,"_ I thought back to him. "_Lemme keep talking to the royal pain in the neck. I really can't stand looking at his resting bitch face."_

That earned a laugh from Grant. Even Allyson reluctantly chuckled.

"_Just remember to use your nice words, Storm-Lord,"_ she thought to me.

"_Of course,"_ I responded before shifting my perception down.

"All the more reason to be more suspicious," Namor said (slowpoke). "Indentured servants will do anything for their freedom."

"First, i'm nobody's servant, ok? We came here by choice to save your pointy ears."

"Your help was neither wanted nor needed."

"Not from where I was standing. If it wasn't for Grant, your army would've broken by now. If it wasn't for me, Attuma would've had you gutted. Besides, weren't you the one that sent Janus to find reinforcements?"

That struck a nerve. Hell, before I said that, Namor was striding over to give me the business. Afterwards, he paused for a second, then rushed at me with his trident. I'll give it to him, even with my Speed Sense kicking in he was still some kinda fast…...and bloodthirsty. He had his trident poised for a stab to my gut (dude always went for the gut), which was all kinds of not good for me. In response, I willed the water under his feet to form a current, twisting him upside down, and blasting him away with a water spiral. He managed to recover, avoiding spilling into a crowd of surrounding Atlanteans by propelling himself over them via small burst of water under his feet. Man oh man did he look ten flavors of pissed off! His teeth (he had fangs) were bared at me. His tattoos glowed brighter, and the water around him started to swirl violently. Looks like diplomacy failed. I gripped my trident harder, ready for a fight. In response to my adrenaline spike, my trident's etchings and patterns started to glow as well, earning a collective gasp from the surrounding Atlanteans.

"_WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ALL OF YOU?!"_ Namor thought to them (yup, now I was tuned in to elf boy radio). "_WHAT THE HELL MAKES THIS LITTLE THING SO DAMN CAPTIVATING?!"_

"_Why don't you ask Oroco?!"_ I thought back to him and the other Atlanteans. "_He blew a nut when I summoned this thing in front of him. Clearly it means something holyish to you lot."_

"_OROCO?!" _Namor mentally yelled for him.

Oroco swam over the crowd of Atlanteans, approached, and bowed to Namor.

"_My lord,"_ he started. "_He willed the power of the sea to defend us from the Nethertrench. His companions used the power of the sun and earth to assist him, his trident-"_

"_Bears the blessings of Poseidon," _Namor interrupted him. "_The sacred texts of the Ocean Chronicles."_

"_You doubt them, my king?"_

Namor was silent for a moment, then started swimming towards me. His trident was upright at his side, so he wasn't gonna attack again, but I stayed ready to shank him if necessary.

"_I don't doubt the texts,_" he said, sizing me up again. "_But I do not believe for a second that the champion of Poseidon….that he would deem some plucky, random surface dweller-"_

"I'm not plucky!" I cut him off aloud. "And as far as random goes, you don't get to choose your lineage, but i'm the X50th great grandson of Zeus! Oh, and i'm a descendant of Poseidon as well."

"How do you know that?" Namor asked me.

"When the stone flew into my mouth and gave me my sweet waterbending powers, Poseidon spoke to me; claimed me as his descendant. Gave me this awesome trident too."

I might as well have said that I was gonna give them eternal life or something, cuz the Atlanteans that heard that caused a wave of gasps, squeals, and swoons. Namor had to mentally roar "SILENCE!" to stop them from fangirling over me.

"I DON'T CARE WHO YOU ARE!" he yelled at me. "WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE! YOU HAVE NO CLAIM TO WHAT BELONGS TO ATLANTIS, THE STONE OF POSEIDON IS NOT YOURS TO TAKE!"

"Dude!" I snapped back. "I'm not trying to take anything from you! If you got such a hard on for the rock, you can keep it!"

"I DON'T NEED YOUR PERMISSION TO KEEP WHAT BELONGS TO ME!"

"YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT! DAMN, WITH EARS LIKE THAT YOU MUST BE ABLE TO HEAR ME; TRY AND LISTEN!"

Maybe it was the fact that I insulted his elf ears (and by extension all the Atlanteans), cuz suddenly everything got really quiet.

"In case you didn't realize, that rock isn't the only problem you'll have!" I continued. "Long story short, Doom's goin' after the Stones of Olympus, me and my team have spent the last few days trying to get them first. As of now, the score's tied up, leaving that one left. Again, we're not here to take anything from you, we just wanted to help. Still, I don't think Doom is afraid of getting wet. He'll come for the stone, so you best figure something out."

I must've been getting better at this, cuz this was the longest Namor ever went without yelling at me.

"So Doom is to blame for the stone going missing?" Namor rhetorically asked. "Humph. Feeding him to the ichthyocacerberi has always been on my to do list. I was aware of the massive chaos wave that returned the stone to the waters, probably due to Strange or Maximoff, but the damage was done by then. With the stone drifting in oceans, Attuma saw a golden opportunity to attack. He must've been planning this assault for some time, but with so many of my forces tasked with retrieving the stone, as well as defending our nation, Attuma had an easier time attacking us than he normally would've. Regardless of that, how did you know we were under siege?"

"I dreamt about it," I said unapologetically. "Lately I dream about bat$#!+ crazy god stuff to say the least. Last night you and yours was on the dream screen, so I made a special request to Fury to...assist you. I passed up getting Zeus' stone just for you. Still tho, didn't you send Janus for help?"

Ooooo. I done did it now. All the goodwill I had just built up with Namor? Mentioning Janus brought all that back to zero.

"Janus!?" Namor said sharply, his trident hand dipping a bit towards me. "What do you know of brother Janus!? What has become of him?!"

"_Maybe I should tell him this part," _Allyson thought to me. "_A softer delivery might lessen the blow."_

"_Nah," _I thought to her. "_I got this, just be ready to give me the necklace when i'm ready for it."_

"_You sure?"_

"_Positive."_

"_Ok, just try not to….you know,"_

"_Screw it up? Don't worry, I think I can manage."_

I shifted out of Speed Mode, and mustered up the courage to tell Namor that his friend was dead.

"Look, man," I started. "Like I told you, my dreams get a bit crazy. Last night I basically scryed the significant events of a lot of crucial factors in the battle; used them to help win the day. Whether you knew it or not, Janus went out to get whatever backup he could. Krang caught up to him though, and ganged him with a squad of piranhaoids. Dude, fought with heart, but he got overpowered bad. Krang messed him up in interrogation, but Janus refused to give that son of a bitch anything. I'm sorry, Janus is dead."

Namor's eyes went a bit wide. I noticed his breath hitch a bit, and his tattoos flared up.

"_Uh-oh," _Grant thought. "_He's gonna lose it."_

"_Sunbird," _I thought to her. "_I could use that necklace right now!"_

She did me one better. As she floated the necklace to me via light sphere, she sung a small bit of the chorus from Counting on You by my boys BTR (so hot). Whatever emotions had just riled up in Namor, Allyson's song basically sent a wave of calm that damn near rippled through the the entire area. One second I was ready to fight for my life, the next, I felt like a peaceful kitten on a rug. I took the necklace once the light sphere dissipated, and handed it to Namor. He didn't look like was gonna go all supernova, but his face drooped hard. Janus must've really been something of a brother to him, cuz his face resembled nothing short of the look of someone who lost their family (I can tell you allllll about that). He gripped the necklace hard, clenching his eyes shut trying to hide his grief. Again, I was a bit on the defensive side; people do drastic things when they hurt, like punching Jasons for example. Props to Namor for not going that route though. He put the necklace on, got his kingly composure back, and stared me down again.

"You say you scryed the death of my dear friend? he asked me.

"Yeah," I said tentatively. "Same goes for everything else. Krang's maneuvering plans, Llyra on your throne, the whole nine yards."

"Indeed. You seem to have known much about the plans of our enemies."

"I'm not one of theirs if that's what you mean."

"I'll be the judge of that. Soldiers! Seize the surface dwellers, escort them to the dungeons!"

Talk about goin from hero to zero real quick. Granted, the five guys who swarmed on me looked sorry about what they were doing; could've sworn elf boy told them to punch their grandmothers. Still, they followed orders, and grabbed my arms, shoulders, and started forcing me down. Oh, I wasn't taking that $#!+ lying down! I bucked and shoved a few of them off of me (apparently my new strength was common in an average Atlantean), trying not to bring in my powers unless necessary. Grant was having an easier time of it. The mother f*(#$* barely even have to move to casually shove his wanna be arrestors outta the way. Allyson was neither here nor there with her resistance. She just put up a light barrier around herself, while trying to reason with Namor.

"King Namor!" she shouted. "Please, don't do this, we're the good guys! We mean you, your people, and your kingdom no harm!"

"Then stop resisting!" he shouted back. "Submit yourselves to the judgement of the counsel, be honest, and you shall be set free in a matter of no more than three days. Continue to resist me as you do, and you will be executed!"

"Three days!" Grant shouted, still casually knocking away Atlantean soldiers. "Dude, we got $#!+ to do! Nobody tryna stay underwater for three days!"

"That is not for you to decide, boy! Your quest means nothing to me, only the security of my kingdom! Now submit!"

Namor was done with the requests. Around Grant, Allyson, and I, the water pressure picked up big time. For me, it felt like Luke Cage was pressing down on my shoulders, not to mention Namor upping the ante with pulses of water taking me out at the back of my knees. The impact and force was enough to even trip Grant up a significant bit. Allyson actually ended up getting the worst of it though. While Namor did the same thing to her (barrier or not, there was still water around her), she activated her Sun Form, using it for a body shield, but then had to deal with the increasing pressure Namor was piling on top of her shield. Yeah, forget this. I don't care if I had to punch a foreign monarch in the face, I was having none of this!

"LEAVE THEM ALONE, NAMOR!" I roared at him.

"No," he said plainly.

Well, I asked nicely. Let it be known that I tried being reasonable. Now it was time to open up a can of Bronx County Whup Ass.

I used my waterbending powers to divert the pressing water around, and away from my body. With the Stone of Poseidon in his trident (hope this wasn't gonna be a thing again), diverting Namor's power was like struggling against a constricting python, but I just barely had enough strength to pry the pressure away from me. Times like these really make me miss schoolyard fights. At least then I was certain my punches mattered without the need to enhance them with lightning. Anyway, I realized this would be another speed/maneuvering game if I wanted to win, and I wasted no time grabbing the advantage first. I went into my Sea Form, and rushed at Namor as little more than a swift current. Right before impact, I constructed myself into a giant fist, and rocked Namor with the force of a herd of rhinos. I will admit this was me being stupid. This was me acting without thinking. This was two grown men fighting like children over a toy truck. I have no f*(#$ to give about that. I'm not gonna say I was sorry for ringing his bell, that would be lying. Still, I had most definitely just sentenced my team to life in prison at the very least. I'd have to find the time between punches to convince Namor to do otherwise.

Back to the fight, I had just knocked Namor completely off the wall platform (give or take 50 ft), and was going to town on his ass. I split myself into three hammerhead shark constructs, and used him as a beach ball, hitting him higher and higher up. Bad guy or not, had to get the fight away from the city. I condensed back into my body after getting a good half a mile over the wall, and hit Namor with the mother of all lightning charged Vibration Punches. Again, I really miss the days where a regular cross punch would be enough to take down a person, cuz even with an impact that would put an eighteen wheeler in the scrap yard, Namor barely went "umph" before slashing at me with his trident. I summoned my shield, blocked the impact, but got bottle rocketed away. Less than a second later, my Speed and Sea Senses and were going off together to tell me how close I was to dying via shark construct frenzy. Yeah, Namor had created twenty Great White Shark constructs to try and make meal outta me. In response, I summoned my trident, doubling my control over the water, and while flying about in my Thunder Form, stabbed and blew apart Namor's constructs. He kept creating more to throw at me, but not even on his best day could Namor get something as big and slow as a giant shark to do me in.

"_ATLANTEANS!" _he mentally roared over the telepathic waves. "_DO NOT INTERFERE, I WILL DISPATCH THIS SURFACE DWELLER FILTH ON MY OWN. MAKE SURE HIS COMPANIONS STAY AWAY FROM THIS BATTLE!"_

Don't worry pal, I can do you one better.

"_Guys!" _I thought to Grant and Allyson. "_In case you didn't hear that, Namor just ordered his people to stay outta the fight; that goes double for you two!"_

"_WHAT?!" _they both mentally shouted at me.

"_Dude, you're insane!" _Grant thought to me. "_You couldn't even put the squeeze on Attuma, now you think you all big and bad cuz you got your own shiny pitchfork?!"_

"_He's right, Storm-Lord!" _Allyson chimed in. "_You can't fight him alone! Let us help, maybe we can reason with him!"_

"_We tried reasoning! That didn't work. Sorry, but the only way we get out of this is if I fight for it! Namor won't respect us ganging up on him, so it has to be just me! I'll try and talk to him between punches, but I need you guys to promise me you won't get involved, no matter how bad it looks!"_

There was a painfully long pause, and not just because I was still up to my neck in shark constructs.

"_Give us a reason," _Allyson thought to me.

"_What?" _I thought back to her.

"_Show us you can handle yourself without dying, and we'll stay out of it."_

"_That work for you too, GT?"_

"_As long as you put on a good show," _he responded. "_Otherwise nothing will be able to stop me from comin' up and ending this right now."_

"_Too easy," _I thought to both of them. "_Just watch me work!"_

I blew apart one last shark construct, used the Power Grid to sense where Namor was, and made the electrons around him give him a quick taser blast. I made sure to dial back on the voltage (didn't wanna kill him or nothin'), using just enough to break his concentration. After Shark Week was over, I put Namor through a wringer of his own. I willed the water around him to swirl at like 200 miles an hour, trapping him in a sphere of water about the size of a 8 ft jumbo beach ball. Namor barely had any room to work with, which was gonna be the least of his worries. I electrified the water, willed a spark of voltage to pelt him in the back, and send him crashing into the whirlwind. Long story short, Namor kept bouncing off the insides of the electrified circular hurricane for a good minute, in which I enjoyed every painful looking impact. I did eventually let him out, but it's not like he had all that much to look forward to outside his pain bubble. While he was spinning around in a glorious cycle of liquid/electric pain, I went to work creating a legion of electrified Wild Force blue ranger constructs (seemed right). As soon as I dropped the bubble, I let loose fifty kamikaze constructs to swarm Namor in explosion after explosion. I gotta hand it to this trident, it made adjusting to my waterbending powers a hell of a lot easier. I said this thing doubled my control over the water, but I was starting to wonder if it was even more than that. I say this because the first wave of kamikaze rangers was swiftly followed by another set, which took almost no effort to conjure up at all. Hell, I was basically rolling these things off the conveyor belt for a good 20 seconds (at least 1,000 kamikaze rangers in total), before Namor busted out via Sea Force explosive wave.

Before I could stop it, the water around me basically yanked me towards Namor, like I was fired out of a slingshot. I couldn't fight the propel of the water, Namor with the stone trumped just me and my trident, but that was the least of my worries. If it wasn't clear enough already, Namor wasn't taken prisoners anymore, cuz he threw his trident straight at my chest once I was in range! I phased through it of course (taking in some more of that sweet Sea Force energy), and used the momentum Namor gave me to try and get the drop on him. I gripped my trident, careful to make sure I was swinging with the flat, and took a swing at elf boy's head. Here's something i'm not used to saying, but Namor easily dodged my swing, and grabbed me by my right leg! First off, goddamn! I was still in my Thunder Form, and Namor was holding on to me as if I didn't have God knows how many volts of juice around me. Still, I wasn't in the mood to get swung around by my legs, so I kicked Namor in he face about 50 times per second for the next five seconds with my free leg, until he finally let go. I swung at him again with my trident, but it was painfully clear I had no idea how to use this thing other than a power booster (tridents handle WAY differently than regular spears). Namor caught it by the shaft, and grabbed the lower end with his free hand. We had a small tussle over my trident, in which I kneed him in the gut a few times, before Namor took a wild backhand swing for my head. I easily ducked under it, blasted him in the face with Thunder Vision, and created a Shao Kahn helmet construct over my head. Before Namor could get the memo, I slammed into him with a headbutt, making my construct explode upon impact. I thought I got a pretty good shot in, that I probably had elf boy seeing stars. Namor's hand gripping my throat like a vice said otherwise!

Ok. On top of being uber strong, durable, and pissed off, Namor had his own super speed thing goin on. No way for me to keep a hold on my trident now. I put it away….just in time to get a punch to the gut! My armor took may be 40% of that hit, meaning I felt almost completely like a bull had just done the electric slide on top of my intestines. I let out a noise that sounded like a constipated cat (believe me, I know what that sounds like), but worked through the pain enough to give Namor a voltage charged Vibration Punch across the jaw. I held nothing back this time, Namor could clearly take anything I was capable of dishing out. Me….not so much. I slammed into his face and chest left and right with the hardest Vibration Punches I could dish out, finally earning some grunts outta Namor. Still if there's anything i've learned from fighting people related to superheroes, it's that ten of my hits is barely one of theirs. As such, when Namor found enough speed to block one of my punches, I phased through his hand, and blasted him away with a Final Flash.

In the two seconds me and Namor spent apart, I jacked up big time for Round 2. I pumped my body with a heaping helping of voltage and Sea Force. I hardened my Thunder Form into a body shield, and willed the water around my immediate body area to swirl around and create another makeshift body shield around me. Let me be crystal clear about this, though. Juggling all these abilities around was about as hard as figuring out a maze on a T.G.I. Friday's kids meal. Unless Namor hit me especially hard (which he might), there was no way to easily break my offensive/defensive set up. Speaking of which, it was payback time for those gut punches!

I flew at Namor at like 100 mph, delivering a grand slam of a Vibration Punch to his jaw. This time, the set up paid off big time, as Namor finally exhibited the physical reaction that I was looking for. The punch basically sent him spinning, not to mention had him pitting up blood! Ok, maybe that last part isn't something to brag about, and in truth I was more than a little surprised by my own strength. I made a mental note to dial it back a little bit as I continued kicking Namor's ass across the ocean. I kept to my speed advantage, circling and punching Namor constantly from all angles 50 times per second. I kept this up for a good half a minute, attacking Namor's chest, throat, face, back, and occasionally, legs. I expected to beat him into unconsciousness relatively easy, but punching the dude was like attacking a brick wall. Hell, the longer I kept up my attack, the harder his skin seemed to feel. Still, I adjusted my attack strength accordingly, and kept up the speed thrashing. To give Namor credit, there were a few times where he managed to block a few punches here and there…..then a few more…..then a lot more…...then he got a punch to connect with my jaw! Ok, now this is just getting ridiculous! I get that the stones can enhance things like speed, strength, etc., but come on, why do they all have to be so fast?! In any case, I really should've seen that coming anyway. Namor's ever increasing durability and speed were directly related to his tattoos getting brighter; meaning more Sea Force intake. By the time another 30 seconds had passed, Namor was shining like a blue Christmas light bulb, and I was lucky if I could dodge his attacks, much less actually hit him. I made myself a promise that if I ever reached the surface alive, i'd take all the lessons on aerial combat from whoever I could. Yeah, at this moment, now that he had the advantage again, Namor was absolutely demolishing me in the melee department. He wasn't an exceptionally great fighter (though he definitely could hold his own in MMA tournaments), but used what he had, mixed with his swimming, kinda flying, and using the water to propel him around faster. He would more or less employ the same tactics I used (key strikes to the chest, face, throat, and back), but my body shields made sure I wasn't in too much danger, although i'd be lying if I said I didn't feel my fair share of pain. It wasn't all gloom and doom for me though. Just like my fight with Attuma, my brain was learning and adapting to Namor's fight style. I gradually started dodging, blocking, and countering more and more of his attack patterns; not to mention using sparks from the Power Grid, as well as giant voltage charged water constructs (fists, eels, stingrays, missiles, etc.,) to gain some necessary breathing room when needed. Basically, the first five minutes of the fight went back and forth constantly, neither of us able to maintain the upper hand for more than 30 seconds at a time.

"_Y'know," _I thought to Namor, making good on my promise to try and defuse the situation. "_I really think we've been getting off on the wrong foot here, man! Lemme spell it out for you one more time! We are not your enemies, we just wanted to help! We have no intentions of taking the stone, nor do we wanna endanger your kingdom! We stopped the bad guys, the stone is safe, mission accomplished, just let us go home in peace!"_

"_Your mewling and graveling will not save you, boy!" _he predictably responded. "_In addition to not being worthy of my trust, you have committed the ultimate offense of striking the favorite son of Atlantis! I will see you broken for that!"_

"_Seriously, dude?! I tell you I mean you no harm, and all you can talk about is killing me?! No wonder you're a joke to all the other heroes!"_

That one REALLY got under Namor's skin, and I ended up paying for it. Side note though, apparently Namor had some kinda animal adaptation power. After my last comment, he blasted me away with a spiral cannon (must've been a household favorite), and for a split second, had a shark hologram shimmering around him. By the time the hologram died down, he was….interesting to look at. His skin was a rough grey color, he had pure black eyes, a mouth full of shark teeth, and talons protruding for his fingers. If there was such a thing as underwater vampires, this guy would kick off a whole nother Twilight series. As freaky as he looked though, I wasn't all that scared of him….until he gave me a reason to be. First, his speed increased. It wasn't a major boost, and in truth it wasn't all that much to get worked up about, but it did make it a bit harder to land any punches on this guy. His strength tho, yeah that was a MAJOR problem. Again, I had two different body shields going on at the same time; by the time Namor was done, that would be so not a thing anymore. Every punch that connected went off with enough force to destroy a city block (my god, I hoped he wouldn't use whale power), completely rocking the foundations of my shields. I managed to avoid, and counter some of his attacks, but it was tragically clear I was out of my depth in this fight. My shields lasted for a total of 15 hits before Namor damn near punched me into the next century with the next one. Luckily, I was only just knocked out of my Thunder Form, though my Speed Sense told me I was in danger of losing my head as well. I summoned my Sky Shield just in time to block a speeding punch that would've definitely left me in pieces. I got shot upwards at like 150 mph, but managed to turn it into an advantage. I got my Thunder Form up and running again, and while steadily trying to fly ahead of him, I blasted Namor with all the Phantom Bolts, blindsided him with the usual hard water constructs, and if he did manage to catch up, I always had something special waiting for him. For starters, I always kept my shield up, which was constantly drinking the voltage I was emitting, meaning I always had an explosive wave up my sleeve. Also, I was juicing my arms with absurd amounts of voltage and Sea Force, up to the point to where it was almost painful, while keeping my free arm vibrating at top speed. In other words, when Namor got too close for comfort, I also had one hell of a Vibration Punch waiting for him. And believe me, there were times when he got too close for my liking. For example, after a minute of keeping my distance with Phantom Bolts and assortments of voltage charged mermaid warrior water constructs, Namor managed to do a speed blitz right through and entire battalion of said mermaid warriors, and made a beeline for me. He was coming in way too hot, with way too much momentum for me to try and backpedal out of his attack. Still, I kept up the illusion that I was trying to escape him, letting him get closer and closer. Once he was too close to even think about thinking of finding the time to stop, I halted in my tracks, braced for impact, and let Namor crash shoulder first into my shield.

As soon as he made impact, I willed all of the voltage built up around the shield to blast out in a pretty decent explosive wave (actually ended up blasting off Namor's shoulder guards and gauntlets completely). Elf boy got punted 100 ft down, and by the look on his face, he had gotten the water knocked right out of him! I mashed the gas, and flew straight at him as fast as I could, giving him another Vibration Punch upside his head, earning another stream of blood from his mouth. I quickly created a brick wall construct behind Namor, pinned him to it, and started wailing on him furiously with a Vibration Punch/shield bash combo. Because my shield was still charged, and because the razor edges were actually chipping away at Namor's armor, I took special care not to hit him across the face unless I could get him with an upswing or a backhand. Still, I was more than able to pound the $#!+ out of elf boy Captain America style, fueling all of my anger towards him in my punches for a full minute before he managed to recover. He caught my shield with both hands as it came in for another bash to the chest (most certainly cutting his palms in the process), quickly yanked it up, and gave me a front kick to the chest, separating me from my shield.

I'm pretty sure this is what it was like to get kicked by a horse, cuz my vision basically inverted in on itself, and i'd probably be feeling this one for weeks, healing factor or not. Namor barreled into my gut, almost knocking the water out of me, and I scrambled around for a bit, before phasing through him, and attacking him from behind. Yeah, I was keeping those teeth and claws as far away from me as possible. Namor managed flip over my flying Vibration Kick, and I had to react super fast to block his incoming talon lunge to my face! I managed to catch his wrists (I was still juicing on voltage and Sea Force), and leaned back, flipping him to where he was below me. Again, I got a kick in the chest, and before I could even get an "oomph" sound out, my Speed Sense triggered hard. My vision was still not all there, but my Sea Sense was telling me that Namor's talons were about half a second away from carving into my chest with a wide slash! I backpedaled away as fast as I could, while blasting him in the face with Thunder Vision. It was a close call for sure, but Namor only scratched the surface of my armor, though I was right to fear those claws; they were like knives through paper. Anyway, I took advantage of Namor's broken attack, and knocked him about 50 ft down by making a giant pool stick construct slam him in the chest. I followed that up by quickly summoning my shield, and ramming into him at 300 mph.

I'll give Namor this, cuz if nothing else, this guy was never gonna stop unless I physically beat him down, or the other way around. There was something that commanded respect from me about that, especially the fact that he was more inclined to use fists (and talons) more than anything else. We straight up brawled for another three minutes, neither of us giving the other inch to think. I slammed Namor with Vibration Punch after Vibration Punch, incorporating a few close range water constructs, like giant boxing gloves and baseball bats, to help me keep the edge. I made constant in and out use of my shield, using it to primarily block Namor's death talons from carving me like a Christmas ham, before slamming it into whatever part (mostly the face) of his body was in reach at the time. That's not to say that Namor didn't get any decent shots in. I got so many knees and punches to the gut, I ended up spitting up some blood of my own. Still, my instincts kicked in, and I managed to adapt and counter Namor's moves gradually. Most of my counter strategy involved circling Namor, attacking at key joints, faking and redirecting attacks, not to mention going back and forth between my physical body and Sea Form, to avoid and try out new attacks. Again, none of my strategies were foolproof, but they helped me stay in the fight.

"_You fight well, boy," _Namor thought to me. "_If you weren't content with being Fury's lackey, you might actually be worthy of respect!"_

By the way, if you're wondering why we were trash talking each other mentally only…..have you tried talking with an electric shield slamming into your face at 50 mph? How about when a you're always half a second away from getting your throat slit? Yeah, the only things that were being said aloud, were cries of pain, anger, frustration, and furious muttering of cuss words.

"_First off," _I responded. "_I'm nobody's lackey-"_

"_Bull$#!+. Look at you! Your very shield has the symbol of your handlers! How desperate was Fury to call on children to carry out his errands?!"_

"_I'M NOT….just shut up! You don't know $#!+! Me and my team are busting our asses trying to keep the world safe, including you, you reject Santa's elf!"_

Huh. Broke my rule about never calling him and elf to his face.

"_Keeping the world safe?!" _he somehow mentally roared in anger and amusement. "_Boy, let me inform you, S.H.I.E.L.D. is just as bad of a place for The Stones of Olympus as the hands of Doom. Think of it, what will become of them once Fury has them all in his possession?" _

"_He'll get rid of them," _I thought back, not sure if I believed myself. "_He'll lock them up, send them back to the gods! He knows he can't control this power-"_

"_It won't stop him from trying. Prime example. You have the strength of the sky and sea, yet you are on the leash of an old man! You jest at me, yet you do tricks for a master you don't even know! You surface dwellers are all the same, believing you have the right to go anywhere, to do anything! Even without foreign threats, you have nearly destroyed your world, and your careless pollution has threatened mine! Hear me now, Jason, the sea belongs to King Namor The First, the favorite son, the protector of Atlantis, the-_

"_OH MY GOD, WHO THE HELL CARES?! Seriously, I don't give a mother f*(# about your pride, your kingdom, or even you for that matter! Yet I got nanites injected into my blood just to survive underwater, swam God knows how many miles across the sea, fought your war, and saved your ass from getting skewered by Attuma. That's right, "King" Namor, I saved you life, you owe me, YOU OWE ME! Hell, i've never so much as thrown a soda can in the Hudson, so you can't pin pollution solely on me! You know why you're a joke, Namor? It's because for all your posturing, you're nothing but a whiny brat that has to yell and scream for attention! You talk about your problems you have with the surface, how we're the bad guys, yet you've attacked us sometimes for almost no reason! You damn near flooded New York back in 1996 because of your beef with the Fantastic Four. You attacked and flooded Wakanda when you were hopped up on that Phoenix mess!"_

"_The X-Men and I did what your surface world governments could never do! We brought peace to the world; ended strife and hunger! Yet you accuse me, ME, of being vain, a tyrant?! Boy, i've been fighting against the forces of hatred and oppression since your great grandparents were in their diapers!"_

"_Punching a few Nazis in the face with Captain America way back when, does not equate to you being a saint! What else have you done to work with the surface, other than punching monsters in the face? Why not try diplomacy at the U.N.? A treaty to exchange resources? Ever heard of oil? That's why you'll never be truly respected Namor, that's why when it really counts, nobody will be tripping over themselves to save you! I practically had to beg Fury to let me come here and clean up your mess! You can't bully or threaten anyone to take you seriously, know why?! Cuz you suck! You look like a greasy, slick, eel faced, Lord of the Rings elf, who got upchucked half digested by an anaconda; and you're a dick! You- AGGGH!"_

Yeah, I probably had way more on my mind to dish out at Namor, but all of that was brought to a screeching halt when elf boy literally morphed into a Great White Shark, barely a foot away from me. If I sound almost disinterested at this point, it's because I really have seen pretty much everything that's gonna push my boundaries at this point. Sure, I was about a foot away from being food for Jaws, but i've been face to face with so much $#!+ these last few days, you're gonna have to do much better than morphing to a shark to break my reality again. Still, it just goes to show how blood thirsty Namor really was. Sure, we weren't exactly playing kickball here, but he was legit ready to eat me! I guarantee I don't taste good, I got way too much salt inside; i'll give you high cholesterol out the wazoo.

In a panic, I shifted into Sea Form just before Namor's jaws came clamping down. On the bright side, I was alive. The down side? I was literally shark gargle. I spread my consciousness as far across the water as I could, spherically occupying a good five miles. I formed myself into a fist big enough to use fighter jets as bath toys, and slammed Namor across the side, sending him spinning like a trained SeaWorld Killer Whale. I followed that up by constructing 30 dolphin constructs (apparently they can put the beat down on sharks), charged them/me up with lightning, and rammed into Namor from all angles repeatedly for a good twenty seconds. After I got bored of that, I willed a part of my Sea Form to envelope Namor in a giant water sphere, turned on the voltage inside, and kept it going for as long as needed. Fun fact for those of you that don't know, most sharks (including Great Whites) have to keep swimming forward to keep the water flowing through their gills, or they'll drown. In the sphere I was keeping Namor in, the fool couldn't swim in circles, much less forward. He may have been holding up pretty well against a million volts, but I bet he still needed to breathe at some point. Namor quickly realized what was happening here, and reverted back to normal, though he quickly changed things up on me again. He did that whole animal spirit thing again, and even though I couldn't see the hologram, I felt a particular spike in the Sea Force, the specific animal he was calling out to. Namor was now channeling the power of an electric eel! Well, more electric eel power, I should say. From what I was sensing, Namor had a natural affinity for channeling eel power, and was doing it automatically (probably why he could get zapped underwater without his heart stopping). Now, he just went from a 5 to a 12. Anyway, Namor wasted no time absorbing, and redirecting the voltage back out in a violent explosive wave, freeing himself from my sphere. Didn't hurt me none, but if Namor was doing what I think he was doing, it was about to. Namor was making a mad dash downwards, which I first thought was him retreating, until I realized what he was going after. Barely a half mile below him, Namor's trident was casually adrift in the water, and if he got hold of it again, especially while I was in my Sea Form, he would wreck my $#!+ immediately. I was thinking that wasn't gonna happen.

I shot my consciousness straight down, and reformed my body just in time to grab the trident at the same time as Namor! There was that brief pause of tension, right before Namor threw the first punch at my face. I'll admit, it was kinda flattering to know that I was so good at just barely surviving fights, that Namor needed to rely on great whatever uncle Poseidon to bail him out of trouble. I leaned back, avoiding the punch by inches, and double kicked Namor in the chest Vibration style. The impact made elf boy buckle a bit, but he held onto the trident with an iron grip. He reached out with his left arm (still had his speed thing going), and managed to grab me by the neck. I phased through his hand before he could crush my throat, and threw a Vibration Punch at his face. Namor dodged it, and a sudden surge of Sea Force started emanating from the trident. Namor was trying to get me away from it via blast wave, and if it actually went off, it would've worked; my grip was too slack, and I had just threw a desperate punch, leaving me wide open. Still, I didn't want that blast wave to go off…..and it didn't. No, seriously, one second it looked like the trident was gonna go nuclear, but then, because I put the brakes on it, it didn't. Before you call B.S. though, the way I did it was by forcing the energy down through my willpower. Even further, when I did that, it felt like the biggest roller coaster drop in the pit of my stomach; I damn near got vertigo pulling that off. In all honesty though, it gave me one hell of a relief. Even if the stone was stuck in Namor's trident, it still chose me, and still answered mostly to me. I could sense Namor had a sizeable influence over it, but I still had him beat. In fact, now that I knew I could influence the stone from the back seat, I had an idea for how to take it back. Keep in mind, this wasn't me trying to steal the stone, I just needed the power boost to put this fool in sleep mode.

I let the trident go, still keeping up the energy suppression thing, propelled myself backwards in Thunder Form, and came back around with my wide slash from my Thunder Spear. Namor easily blocked it, while cutting back at my legs, and we did a bit of spear fighting. In case you're wondering, yes, Namor was easily the better spear fighter. I had to phase between his slashes and stabs constantly, and could never even make him so much as falter against my attacks. Still, that's not the point, this fight was just a smoke screen for my behind the scenes plan. See, these Atlantean tridents were really good conduits for energy. Whether this was magic or science, I don't care, because it seems like there was enough room in this world for both. Anyway, these things could absorb and streamline a lot of energy, but they had their limits. Specifically, if the energy runoff kept doubling back on itself, then exploded all at once, it would not only break the trident, but cause an explosive wave big enough to separate, maybe even knock Namor out. For the next four minutes, that was basically the story of my life (I hate that song). I mainly fell back on letting Namor lash at me, while I tried my best to block and dodge his attacks. Namor seemed frustrated that he couldn't waterbend all of a sudden, but his trident fighting more than made up for that. As we fought, I focused on moving the battle further and further up away for the city, not sure how big the overall blast was gonna end up being.. Oh, but get this. Around the two minute mark, Namor did that whole hybrid man beast thing with the power of an Ichthyocacerbeus; those giant dog things with bat wings, and tentacles coming out of their backs, that could also breathe green fire! His skin turned scaly and black, his eyes turned pupiless luminescent green, and the guy doubled to Brock Lesnar levels of beefcake, actually busting his armor in pieces from the torso up. He grew fangs, talons, goddamn dragon wings, and four octopus tentacles, big enough to crumple a Cadillac, out of his back. I'm certain demons in Hell, aren't this nightmare inducing!

Yeah, I bolted straight up. Forget trying to fight another mythological monstrosity, I was getting the hell outta dodge, until I could attack this from a better angle. I kept flying up and around for the remaining two minutes, maneuvering out of the way of Namor's fire streams and tentacle lashes. I did manage to give him a middle finger, by using the Power Grid to create quick slashes of lightning to slice of his wings and tentacles, before turning around and slamming him in the chest, shield bash style. At this point, Namor's trident was absolutely filled to the brim with the amount of Sea Force doubling back through it. Time to let this puppy blow! I backflipped off of Namor's chest, propelling myself as far back as I could (about 100 meters), before wrapping myself in a hard water safe construct, fueled with as much Sea Force as I could juice it with. Before Namor knew what was happening, I willed the built up power in his trident to go off like a car bomb, and OMFG what a spectacle! I am not $#!++*^$ you, the boomage was big enough to completely engulf the Empire State Building twice over, and completely obliterate at least half of Manhattan. The explosion completely decimated my construct, and sent me spiraling down towards the city. If we weren't fighting so high, the reverb waves might've ended up destroying the city. The extreme amount of Sea Force absolutely bombarding me, felt like getting dunked over and over again in a tub of ice cold water that was also electrified. Still, I should be thankful; without the constant shock to my system, I would've crash landed in what I presumed was supposed to be some sort of recreational park. That didn't happen, I recovered, and was zooming my way back up in no time.

I could sense the Stone of Poseidon adrift in the water, about 20 miles (yes really) above me. I cranked up the speed, and held my hand out, calling for the stone to fly back to me. It was a bit resistant at first, but I sensed the stone agreeing with me, complying with my wishes…...until it wasn't. About 15 miles and closing from the opposite direction, Namor was swimming towards the tone as fast as he could, his own hand reaching desperately to reclaim it! Ok, this was bull$#!+! I was the descendant, the stone chose me, why did elf boy get to have a claim to it (don't answer that)?! I poured on even more speed, trying desperately to keep up with Namor (how could he swim faster than I could fly?), keeping an iron grip on my...I guess telepathic hold over the stone. We were both closing in fast, him maybe a half a mile ahead of me, but neither of us could convince the stone to swing in our favor. I could feel the sense of confusion and unease around the stone. On one hand, it did indeed choose me, on the other hand, it spent a lot of time with Namor, and grew quite fond of him. Again, this is not some soap opera bull$#!+, this stone was some form of sentient, and was split on whether it liked me or Namor more! Personally, I couldn't blame it. Sure, Namor's an ass, but even I couldn't claim to be much better. Still, I needed it to swing in my favor. I couldn't afford to give Namor the power boost again. Jesus Christ, I feel like a politician.

"_Come on, dude!" _I thought to it. "_Remember how we beat Attuma down?! How we saved the city from Llyra?! We make an awesome team, Poseidon kinda sorta said so! Come back to me, we can be a team again!"_

I was pleading to a rock to take me back. God help me, I have truly fallen.

In any case, the stone wasn't exactly feeling me. Again, while it didn't exactly speak, its general feeling was something along the lines of "_Dude, I get it, but this other guy wants me just as bad. We have history. I can't choose!". _Yup, I was getting no special treatment here. Even worse, I couldn't just drop my hold over it, and focus more on upping my speed. Namor and I were pretty much equally matched in this tug of war, and if I let my hold over the stone go, it would fly to Namor, like a stupid girl (or boy) that goes back to their cheater boyfriend (or girlfriend, gotta be inclusive or the internet will have my ass). Still, I wasn't fast enough, Namor was closing in faster than I was. I was gonna lose!

All of a sudden (because why not), the stone started glowing like a lighthouse. The current around me started to increase, speeding me towards the stone, like I was in the Hulk roller coaster at Universal (Doris took me there when I was 11, it was fun). At first, I thought the stone had finally made up its mind, and chose me. That was until I realized, Namor was getting the exact same treatment, and we were both gonna crash into each other at like 200 mph! My first instinct was to start phasing, but before I could, a burst of energy, a lite version of an explosive wave, emanated from the stone, engulfing both me and Namor in a massive wave of Sea Force. I don't specifically remember going unconscious, but when I could see straight again, I got the feeling that I had missed a reel of something important, cuz all of a sudden I was somewhere else, and not physically.

Don't get me wrong, I was still in…..water I guess, but it had a completely different vibe to it than regular ocean water. It felt more pure, almost unnatural even, and it was the only thing here. I mean that in every sense of the word. My Sea Sense was a bit blurry, but in every conceivable direction, for as far as I could feel, there was not a single physical person, structure, or animal here; it was just pure water. I didn't panic. If i've learned anything this past few days, weird $#!+ ended up explaining itself sooner or later. Still, I found it very odd that when I tried to get a sense of my physical body…...it just wasn't there. I was very, very conscious, but I couldn't find or sense my body. At first, I allowed the possibility that I had accidentally slipped into my Sea Form, but when I tried to pull myself together, I couldn't! Ok, now I was starting to panic; either my powers were out of control, or I was some sorta dead. Ok, ok, ok, calm down, calm down, calm down, something has to happen, everything will work itself out! I kept telling, damn near chanting that in my head, looking around frantically for something, anything-oh look, something blue and shiny! It was little more than a wisp, or at least what I could see of it. It had a humanoid type of shape to it, maybe female, but it disappeared as soon as it formed. Still, it was something, and friendly or not, I wanted it back.

I focused on…..something. Can't exactly describe what it was in particular, but it felt like a mix of both concentrating and relaxing; like someone who was trying to meditate, but wasn't quite getting the hang of it. After about 20 seconds, a blue hologram of a shark (that'll do wonders for your heart rate) appeared, scaring the holy hell outta me. I sucked up the jump scare, and kept going; almost certain that the other side of whatever I was going through was at least something resembling good. As I…..meditated I guess is the right word, I started to notice a lot more details about my surroundings. First off, I was almost without a shadow of a doubt sure that I was in some sort of water spirit realm. What makes me think that? I dunno, maybe all of the water spirits coming out of the woodwork. Not counting the shark that almost gave me a heart attack, more and more spirits of varying animals, sea monsters, Atlanteans, and even human men and women, were starting to appear, as if they were always there, but beyond my vision. As hundreds turned into thousands, then millions, then way more, my head started filling with this buzzing. At first, I dismissed it as my telepathy acting up again, but this was different. The noise wasn't annoying. As it got louder and louder, I realized it was the voices of limitless spirits in this realm. It was like being a collective, a kind of hive mind that wasn't trying to absorb me. The thoughts, experiences, and emotions (which never drifted below base level happiness) of all these people, flooded my entire being, making me feel like I was having the best cup of hot caramel every single moment. Seriously, all at the same time, I was enjoying the life experiences of a dolphin that spent her life as a performer, a scuba diver named Steve Baker, who was also lighthouse guard, and one of the two Ichthyocacerberi that died defending fighting against Attuma's forces (the one from my dream). I was a bit confused as to why human souls were here, but it was still nice just to be amongst them. None of the soul were lamenting, or sad about their deaths. There was no regret, no fear, just one big group chat of a bunch of different souls having a good time. As the overall buzz continued, I started noticing music in the background. Beautiful orchestral, harmonic music, that was a symphony of both actual singing (probably from dead water nymphs), as well as beat better than any mix I could ever hope to find on YouTube. Whatever was making these sounds, no instrument or mixer back on the surface world could hold a candle to it. This was the type of music that grabbed you by the gut, and never let go until it was finished. Unfortunately for my gut, I didn't get the feeling that this music would stop anytime soon. I'll admit, I almost ended up losing myself in the merriment. This slice of peace on a stick was so good, I could've stayed here forever, forgetting pretty much everything I had every left behind. That was until I came across the memories of Janus.

His memories (beside being like one big action flick) sparked me back to my senses once I got to the part about him dying at the hands of Krang's hunting party. In a split second, I prioritized my mission and sense of self, before getting yanked somewhere else. My vision didn't exactly blur, but it was a pleasant little rush. Besides, when I arrived, it's not like I was anywhere relevant. Despite being in a spiritual community pool, it was still just a pool of I guess infinite water. The only things that were of relevance, were the two spirits floating in front of me. One was Janus himself, draped with a fancy cape over his bare chest, wearing a seashell necklace, casually holding a trident across his shoulder. The dude looked good, happy; I was glad to see that he was getting the VIP treatment in death. The other guy, much to my distaste, was king elf boy himself. Seeing him should've made some sorta furious, but being in this spirit water was like being on morphine all the time. I couldn't muster up the strength to frown at him (my body was starting to take form), much less try and kick him in the teeth. He looked at me with an almost dumb expression, like he couldn't so much as count to two, much less try and kick ME in the teeth. Then again, I was probably making the same expression, before I got snapped back to my senses. Speaking of which, Namor actually was starting to come back around, like he was slipping out of a hallucination.

"_Welcome, my king," _Janus addressed Namor, his voice sounding like it was being amplified with whatever commercials want people think is in Axe to make men chick magnets. "_And a warm salutations to you, Jason Fuller; I welcome you both to the court of Poseidon!"_

I wanted to ask "what court?", considering that we were in the middle of nothing but water…..then I looked around again.

Right behind Janus, was this palace, bigger than the entire island of Manhattan. It looked like the respective Greek, Roman, and Medieval architecture periods were smashed together until something presentable came out. To be fair, the castle, or multiple castles (and mansions), did look pretty dope. Starting off, it was little more than a giant blue hologram, but gradually started to come into form. The entire thing was made of white marble and gold, decorated out the same multicolored coral that was in the Atlantean gardens. Porticos, villas, elaborate bridges, statues of Poseidon holding his trident in various poses (what an attention whore), and hippodromes dotted the expanse of the palace in every direction. I could only imagine what it was like on the inside; i'd need a GPS just to find my way to a bathroom. And this castle was only the tip of the iceberg. The previously empty waters occupied with souls, were now dotted with elaborate Greco/Roman cities on floating platforms! Not just like a few cities, mind you, i'm talking about hundreds upon hundreds floating about in every direction. Directly below me was this city that consisted of ten rings, each getting bigger the further away from the center they were, that was easily bigger than most major worldwide cities. I noticed how the cities gradually became more real to me, taking on solid form; now that I mention it, I was starting to get the feeling back in my body, there seemed to be some form of shimmering sunlight several miles above me….

"_Careful!" _Janus warned me and Namor. "_Already you start to tether to this world! Should the connection become too strong, you will lose your connection to the physical world."_

"_And you brought us here…..why?" _I asked Janus. "_I mean, that was you right?"_

"_Mind your tongue, boy!" _Namor snapped at me (even in the afterlife he was a dick). "_Janus is...was, a fine warrior of Atlantis, well deserving of his place here. You will show the proper respect!"_

"_I thank you for your kind words, my king," _Janus responded. "_But I do not bring happy tidings to you."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_That the fight for the oceans are not yet done. That the key to victory only comes with the acceptance of what you know in your heart to be true about Jason."_

"_NO! It can't be true! I am the king of Atlantis, I served Poseidon faithfully, I-"_

"_Have never successfully bonded with his stone, despite your many attempts. You know the Atlantean Chronicles by heart, Namor. Only Poseidon's chosen can fully wield the stone's power."_

"_No, not a surface dweller; how can it be possible?!"_

"_Uh, guys?" _I spoke up. "_I'm floating right here. Anybody care about my two cents on the subject?"_

"_SHUT UP!" _Namor roared at me.

"_Namor!" _Janus sternly responded. "_Calm yourself! Can't you both see you are more alike than you know? You are both stubborn and proud, just as I was in life. You both contain a fire inside of you, one that burns to protect the ones you love and hold dear. Namor, I know you are hesitant to work with the surface dwellers; we have been wounded many times by their transgressions. Still, you have been among their greatest minds and heroes; you know there is nobility deep within them. In some cases, such Jason, the nobility is more prevalent than you are willing to admit. You both need to get out of your own way, and come together now. If the simple dissenting factor is mistrust, allow me to remedy that now."_

He traced his finger across the water, each motion creating a line of blue energy, until a full sized trident (if I see one more trident, I swear to Zeus). This meant absolutely nothing to me, but Namor was basically beside himself with pissiness.

"_Janus!"_ he almost squealed. "_You can't be serious! The joining ritual….with him!"_

"_Joining?!" _I responded. "_That sounds an awful lot like marriage, and i'd feed myself to an Antarctic Levithan, before doing any kind of joining with this undersea-"_

"_Quiet, both of you!" _Janus interrupted me. "_To answer your question, Jason, yes this is a ritual often associated with Atlantean marriage, but it is the principal of the act that is significant. This ritual allows the participants to experience the lives of each other. No secrets or lies will omitted from the transfer. Whatever feelings you may still have about each other are still up for you to decide, but if the prime dissenting factor is lack of information, you will no longer be able to hide behind that veil."_

Namor looked agitated by this, and I guarantee it was because of him being king. If there is anything that can be considered universal, it's the fact that long time political figures have more than their fair share of skeletons in the closest. There are things Namor's done that he'd rather me not know about. Tough squash.

"_I'm in," _I said. "_At least then you might believe what i've been trying to get through your thick skull."_

I could basically see the blood vessels popping in his forehead. He was struggling to keep his composure, his pride, together. That meant grabbing hold of the trident…..which he did! I held in the roaring desire to laugh in his face, and grabbed the trident as well. Yeah….I wasn't laughing anymore. First off, Janus forgot to mention the fact that this ritual pretty much made your entire life flash before your eyes in the span of maybe two seconds. More than that, it was like experiencing those events again for the first time. I remembered every second I ever spent with my parents to an almost painful level. From baking cookies and watching Spongebob with my mom, my dad teaching me how to ride a bike, every PTA meeting we ever went to…the moment my babysitter had to tell me they weren't coming home. I felt the pain and anger for their deaths cut through me like a cold knife. I experienced every wretched moment I spent in foster care, finally getting adopted by Doris, everything that came afterwards., all of it all over again. To be fair, it wasn't all bad. I got to feel every victory I nabbed against someone who was stupid enough to throw hands with me, Doris just being Doris, meeting Grant and Allyson…..last night with Allyson (God yes). I felt the thrill and the terror of fighting all those god powered super villains, my near death, the Shadow Gods, everything all over again. Even further, the ritual allowed me to feel everything from an outsider's perspective. It wasn't accusatory or anything, but i'd have to be pretty dense to not be able to see how much of a violent, selfish, sometimes apathetic, and angry dickbag I could really be. It made me feel all kinds of shame on top of the cascading waves of emotions rolling over me. Still, I had it easy compared to Namor.

First off, this guy was freaking ancient; born in like 1920! I experienced his entire childhood, him growing up with his mother, cousins, and learning about his powers. I experienced the fear he felt at the reality of so much pollution of the ocean (Atlantis wasn't always as deep as it was now), how it laid the groundwork for his mistrust of the surface. I experienced all of his battles with The Invaders, most of which was done to protect his kingdom from Nazis. This guy was no stranger to heartbreak though, as Atlantis has been attacked multiple times by the surface, other undersea kingdoms,and sometimes even earthquakes. Hell, this guy even had his memory wiped once, and spent the better part of 10 years not knowing who the hell he was. To add injury to insult, when he did get it back, his kingdom was in shambles, his people presumed ether scattered, or dead. You'd have to have no heart to not feel his grief like a freight train. Again, he wasn't all deserving of sympathy. He sided with villains against heroes and the surface multiple times (and also had a thing for Invisible Woman). He was part of some sorta superhero secret society that tried to end threats before they began (actually that doesn't sound half bad). He also looted and reverse engineered some Wakandan tech when he flooded it during his Phoenix Five days; that's how he managed to move the city deeper into the ocean. Dude, had a lot of failed relationships, was basically tricked by Llyra (his cousin) into conceiving an evil son named Llyron, and lost his kingdom more times than I could even count; one of which was because he destroyed it himself to kill his other terrorist son, Kamar. The guy wasn't without his good moments through. He fought and defended humanity with The Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men numerous times. He was against sending Hulk off the planet (cuz that was a thing); and of course, fought against Nethertrench breaches when they popped up. Almost 100 years of input and life experience crammed into maybe three seconds. I gotta say, Janus knew what he was talking about, cuz after all that, there was no way I could accuse Namor of just being unnecessarily angry all the time. If anything, I was the one in the wrong.

"_Better?" _Janus asked us.

Me and Namor kinda looked at each other with a dumbfounded expression. Empathy levels were obviously at an all time high, and for a good few seconds, we just didn't know what to do.

"_So…." _I started. "_Are we good, we cool?"_

"_Your memories line up with your plea," _he responded. "_And you are, at your core, an honorable young man. Yes, we are, as you say, cool."_

"_Ditto. I mean about you being honorable. You've done a lot of stuff, but you're no bad guy; certainly not a joke. Sorry about the harsh words."_

"_As if your mere words could harm the Avenging Son of Atlantis! Nevertheless, you are forgiven."_

We shook hands.

"_So, Janus?" _I asked him. "_What was that about some other threat?"_

Reality shifted around us, like we were passing through a kaleidoscope, and when things cleared up again, we were over the Nethertrench. I could tell we weren't physically here, we were kinda in limbo between the spirit and physical world. Still, being over this thing was just as terrifying. At first, I assumed it was just this, that Janus wanted us to go back and close the trench (somehow), but then the trench started to change. I couldn't make out the shape at first, just a bunch of darkness starting to rumble and rise into something. In less than a minute, the shape became definitive…...and I was still confused. Don't get me wrong, I could clearly tell what it was, a collage of Greek/Roman temples, villas, porticos, and mansions (God, I want one), about the size of Atlantis, made out of hardened shadows resembling solid obsidian/marble. I didn't get what was the big deal about it. Other than the fact that it was absolutely infested with trench monsters (that Minotaur/octopus thing had to die), I didn't see anything other than another potential attack force to put the brakes on. Namor on the other hand, looked like he was gonna pass out.

"_Impossible," _he said. "_How can this be?"_

"_How can what be?" _I asked him. "_Look, i'm floating right here, fill me in!"_

"_Can't you see?! The trench is establishing a physical form!"_

"_Yeah, but it can already do that, i've seen it do that, so what's the big deal?"_

"_What you consider to be physical," _Janus spoke up. "_Is just the shadow taking on constructs, similar to what you do with your powers. It is true that this is not the first time such a large expanse of the Nethertrench has breached the physical world, but if Llyra has her way, it will take hold."_

"_Still lost here," _I said.

"_The castle you see rising," _Namor said. "_It is tangible the same way a building in your surface world cities are. When Nethertrench gains that much tangibility, it becomes an anchor, a gateway that will allow more of it to fester and spread across the sea. If left unchecked, the wave of evil could eventually take the surface as well."_

"_And Llyra is not content in dealing with eventual success," _Janus said. "_Observe."_

I felt reality shift again (i'm starting to hate reality shifting), though this time, it just felt like my organs were trying themselves in knots, rather than the whole vision trip nonsense. When that settled down, my insides still felt like they were being liquefied. I don't know how, but I was sensing three points of concentrated….evil, I guess? Two points were at either side of the nation sized palace, the third being at the summit temple building. Directly below that, closer to the lower end of the castle, I sensed another pit of swirling evil, like someone had managed to keep a mini hurricane of emo locked in their Manhattan sized basement. If you can believe it, the base of this operation went even lower than that! I was sensing a long ethereal rod stretching down into raw Nethertrench energy. The rod was working as a transfer mechanism, taking energy, and dumping it into the mini hurricane; which was being used as the energy source to power whatever the three main points in the palace were supposed to do. Another interesting thing I noticed, was how these focal points, the mini hurricane and rod included, created a connect the dots sorta trident. I still had no idea what this was supposed to mean, but it was obviously nothing good (no $#!+).

"_Ok," _I spoke up. "_I get that this is really bad, but what's happening here?"_

"_Llyra is using her magic to transfer Nethertrench energy through her anchor," _Namor said. "_I assume you can sense the trident rune she has manifested, which can be used as a symbol of magical power enhancement. She is the cause of this, no way could she manifest a rune that big without being bonded to the trench. The spell will take time, but once she has enough power, she will essentially activate a Nethertrench bomb that will permeate every inch of the ocean."_

"_How much time do we have?"_

"_At best….two hours."_

"_Any idea how to stop this thing from going off?"_

"_Not effectively, no. At best, we would have to make contact with the three spear tips of the trident rune. From there, we'd have to infect the dark energy with Sea Force, or any other sort of positive energy. When the spell goes off, the instability of mixing energies would blow that abomination of a palace out of the water, shattering Llyra's anchor._

Maybe the word effective meant something different to Atlanteans, but that sounded like a pretty solid plan to me. Yeah, it was easier said than done, but that was a good base level plan at the very least.

"_That sounds pretty good to me," _I said. "_What's the problem?"_

"_The sheer amount of solidified Nethertrench being blown apart would still cause lasting damage," _Namor responded. "_It could lead to more frequent breaches, as well as ethereal pollution that could affect sea life on a wide scale."_

"_Okay…..but what if we pushed the fallout downwards?"_

Namor turned to me, his face displaying hesitant optimism.

"_Explain," _he said.

"_Assuming you're willing to let me borrow the stone for a little while longer," _I started. "_Once we get a time frame for when the explosion goes off, we can clear out of the immediate blast zone, and I can wrap a Sea Force charged barrier around it, and with a little help from my friends, we can force it it down into the trench."_

"_That's…..possible. But that will take an enormous amount of strength and willpower on your part. Even then, there aren't that many adept Sea Force users in Atlantis. We may not have enough positive energy to disrupt the spell."_

"_Well, as far as strength and willpower, trust me, I can do it. As for the other thing, now i'm almost certain you were knocked out for most of the last part of the battle. Long story short, Grant can use Geo-Force, which is positive, and Allyson's sun powers are also positive. Trust me, they've got enough fire power to make me look like a lightweight most of the time; we're all good on the positive energy aspect."_

"_Are you suggesting attacking the focal points one at a time?"_

"_Waste of effort. Three at once, teams of two. Namorita and Allyson seem like a good team, we'll send them to the left. I guess Grant and Oroco could be a good pair; they can take the right. You and me, we'll go to the top."_

"_Why the top?"_

"_Cuz that's where Llyra will be. Bad guys love being on top."_

"_You're forgetting something. Llyra will undoubtedly have legions of demons guarding her fortress. Are you suggesting the six of us can manage to wade past her forces."_

"_Of course not. But we can rally the remaining abled bodied soldiers you have left, as many sea creatures as we can get, and I don't suppose you can summon more sea monsters?"_

Again, Namor perked up a little bit. Figures the way we made peace with each other was by preparing for war against someone else.

"_I can access the Kraken Dimension-"_

"_The what?!"_

"_The Kraken Dimension. The realm of sea monsters. Ever present, but on a different vibrational frequency to this world. Occasionally some get out, but we round them back up if they become problematic for surface dwellers."_

"_Umm…..nah, I don't wanna know. But yeah, do that, bring out a lotta big guns, we'll use that as a distraction force for Llyra's first defense wave. Don't mean to make them sound expendable, but the sooner we give Llyra the business, the less lives will be lost."_

Namor's face looked grim again, and I couldn't blame him. I was basically asking him to throw his people into the meat grinder, not even an hour after just barely managing to hold their own against Attuma.

"_Don't worry," _I tried to reassure him. "_I'll keep up the water defenses in the background to help them. I won't abandon you and your people. Neither will my friends."_

Namor seemed a bit taken aback by this (would've sworn he'd cry if he were the type), but clapped me on the shoulder. If not complete trust, I at least had his cooperation.

"_We'll have to work out the details with the remaining soldiers," _he said. "_I'll also need the help of the elders, but we at least have a fighting chance. If only our numbers weren't so taxed-"_

"_Actually, King Namor," _Janus spoke up (I half forgot he was here). "_Numbers and power are the least of your worries."_

Reality shifted again (cuz that wasn't getting old), and we were in the heart of Atlantis. Didn't seem like anything noteworthy; just a bunch of celebrating Atlanteans…..and now I get it. Namor and I were floating over a pretty large vantage point, so I couldn't exactly swear this was 100% true, but it seemed like we were above some sort of massive crypt. There were literally millions of graves, most of them old (they had elaborate golden tombstones), but a good handful very fresh and makeshift. Those graves, all of them, were exhumed forcibly; like they were blown apart from the inside out. I took me a few secs to get it, but I realized those Atlanteans swimming about and praising Poseidon, they were all resurrected from the dead! More than that, it seemed like they, and every other Atlantean had gotten a massive upgrade. I could feel the connection that every Atlantean in the nation had with the Sea Force, which was previously latent, had become active. As I watched the resurrected Atlanteans rejoicing, I noticed how their tattoos were glowing bright with Sea Force, the water around them swirling and changing rapidly. I think Namor and I had just given them superpowers.

"_You see?" _Janus said. "_Continued exposure to Sea Force, not to mention being in Poseidon's good graces, has yielded tremendous results. Yet, as stated in the Chronicles, this was only possible-"_

"_When a son of the sea, and the chosen of Poseidon join hands in unity around the stone!" _Namor finished.

"_True. The Chronicles did not mention that you would join hands out of strife first, but perhaps that detail was lost in translation."_

"_Perhaps. And what of you, Janus? Will you not rejoin the living?"_

"_Alas, I cannot. The Sea Force cannot reconstruct a body from nothing. Even then, I am happy here, Namor. I have found my peace, you must go and find yours."_

Namor looked more than a little disappointed, but managed to suck up his feels, and give Janus one last hug.

"_Be well, my friend," _he said. "_Know that your death was not in vain, nor did it go unpunished."_

Janus nodded, and I felt (you guessed it) reality shifting again. This time, though, the shifting was less obnoxious, as I felt my soul retethering to my body.

"_You ready to kick some Nethertrench ass? _I asked Namor.

"_Hell yes." _Namor responded, before my hearing and vision blacked out.

I woke up to Grant and Allyson trying to shake me awake (cuz that was gonna work), and almost passed out again, due to Allyson squeezing my lungs out with a massive bear hug.

"Are you ok?!" she almost shouted. "Please do me a solid, and be ok!"

"I'm fine, Sunbird," I said. "I….."

I felt strange. Stronger, more aware, powerful. It took me a while until I figured it out, but I looked down to find that the Stone of Poseidon was in my chest again! God, didn't know how much I missed it! I didn't celebrate though, cuz barely ten feet across from me, Namor was also conscious, and he didn't look too happy that the stone chose me again. Granted, the stone didn't leave him empty handed. His armor was completely repaired, as well as his trident. His tattoos were glowing brighter than ever, and the water around him was almost humming with power. Still, it probably wasn't the best thing to see his stone go back to the other guy. I gave him a "sorry, is this ok?" kinda look, and was all kinds of relieved when he gave me a nod.

"_We have to make preparations," _he thought to me. "_Can you stand?"_

"_I'm good," _I thought back. "_Let's get to work!"_

We both got up, and Namor started issuing a telepathic state address to his people.

"Good news, guys," I said to Grant and Allyson. "Namor and I finally came to an understanding! Also, look! Atlanteans raised from the dead, with powers! Pretty dope, right?!"

"What's the bad news?" Allyson asked me.

Killjoy.

"Why do you think there's bad news?" I responded.

"Dude," Grant said. "There's always bad news. It's part of the package deal."

"Ok, you got me," I said. "Way out in the distance, Llyra is building a Nethertrench anchor that'll blow really soon, flooding the sea, and eventually the world, with evil energy. Namor and I made a plan to stop it, and guess who's gonna be front and center of our battle plans?"

Grant sucked his teeth, while Allyson rolled her eyes.

"I know, I know," I said.

"No, it's fine, Storm-Lord," Grant said. "We're heroes, it's what we do. Besides, it's not like we got anything better to do."

"True," Allyson said. "But i'm gonna spend all day in the sun tomorrow. So, what's the plan, bolt boy?"


End file.
